Source Citations, part 1: White Character and Civilization, Compared to Chinese
Source citations of White-China essay 3/6/18, part 1
These are the first half of the source citations (second half is here; plain text version is here) for Frank Jamger’s essay, “White Character and Civilization, Compared to Chinese,” which was posted on Frank Jamger’s blog, here:
“White Character and Civilization, Compared to Chinese”
• https://fjamger.blogspot.com/2018/03/WCaCCtC.html
and also on National Vanguard, here:
• https://nationalvanguard.org/2018/03/white-character-and-civilization-compared-to-chinese/
and, in case of censorship, the article and its sources are archived at these locations:
• “White Character and Civilization, Compared to Chinese” on the author’s blog
• “White Character and Civilization, Compared to Chinese” on National Vanguard
• Source Citations, part 1 for “White Character and Civilization, Compared to Chinese” on National Vanguard (this page)
• Source Citations, part 2 for “White Character and Civilization, Compared to Chinese” on National Vanguard (next page)
• Source Citations for “White Character and Civilization, Compared to Chinese” plain text
This citation document contains text which is the property of the copyright owners; no claim of authorship or ownership of these excerpts is made here; they are strictly for educational purposes under the fair use provisions of copyright law.
For convenience, the Outline is recapitulated here, followed by the essay sections and the text of the source citations interpolated with the essay text. The bibliography is at the bottom.
Recapitulated Outline:
The purpose of this essay.
My interest in the nature of ideas.
A word on the import of trust.
Two key differences between Whites and Chinese.
I. The evolutionary basis of White-Chinese differences in trust and explorativity: rural versus urban agricultural environments.
II. The higher trust and compassion of Whites engenders greater morality and freedom.
Introduction: The nature of morality.
II-1. Chinese are more apprehensive and timid; Whites are more outgoing and aggressive.
II-2. Whites’ greater trust and honor enables freer communication and transactions; while cooperation among Chinese is problematic.
II-3. Compassion for the distressed is greater among Whites than Chinese.
II-4. Communication is more open and honest among Whites than Chinese.
II-5. Whites have greater moral drive than Chinese, in general.
A. Whites have greater moral drive, based on greater trust and empathy and lower outgroup discrimination.
B. Whites behave more morally than Chinese, in every respect.
C. Cultural norms of morality are based on genotypes.
II-6. Crime, abuse, and war: Whites are more aggressive, Chinese are more deceptive.
A. Whites commit more crimes of aggression; Chinese commit more crimes of deception.
B. Much exploitation and abuse by Chinese is not regarded as crime.
C. Whites fight more wars; Chinese have more rebellions.
D. Competition is the law of nature.
II-7. White families are voluntary unions; Chinese families are communist.
A. Chinese families are highly solidary because Chinese society is insecure; White families are freer.
B. Chinese families are tightly disciplined.
C. Chinese families have collective responsibilities.
II-8. White governments are representative cooperations; Chinese governments are despotisms.
Introduction.
A. White citizens are more independent.
B. Chinese rulers are more despotic.
C. Whites have had more power-sharing institutions; China has been autocratic.
D. Communist China is autocratic, just as were imperial regimes.
E. White governors are generally honorable; Chinese governors are generally corrupt.
F. Whites’ representative governments are stronger and more effective than China’s despotic regimes.
III-IV. Introduction: Whites are more explorative and creative than Chinese, while Chinese have higher memory-based intelligence.
A. Superior White explorativity and creativity; Superior Chinese memory and skill.
B. Whites have more discrete and abstract perception; Chinese have more concrete and detailed perception.
C. Creative/analytic and memory-based intelligence are broadly correlated, despite being inversely related at high levels.
III. The nature of intelligence, explorativity, and creativity.
III-1. The nature of memory-based intelligence.
A. Applications of memory-based intelligence.
B. Keen memory facilitates calculation, as well as recognition.
C. Keen memory facilitates manual skills, as well as mental ones.
III-2. The nature of creative/analytic intelligence.
A. Idea generation is based on explorativity and generation of new knowledge.
B. Idea generation requires abstract perception, in order to match knowledge with methods to obtain goals.
C. Matches are made of effects, as well as objects/actions; principles thereof being barely definite.
D. A creative mind considers a broad range of potential outcomes, as well as courses of action.
E. A creative mind wonders why when anomalous outcomes occur, and thereby refines principles.
F. A creative mind argues and composes similarly as it generates ideas and scrutinizes predictions.
III-3. Summary and comparison of memory-based and creative/analytic intelligence types.
A. Memory-based intelligence.
B. Creative/analytic Intelligence.
III-4. Intelligence tests and visuo-spatial ability.
A. Intelligence tests, including visuo-spatial tasks, measure memory-based intelligence, not creativity.
B. Explanation of the male-female visuo-spatial ability gap.
C. The difference between use of abstract principles to calculate, and abstract formulation and perception of principles to generate ideas.
IV. Evidence of intelligence types in Whites and Chinese.
Introduction.
IV-1. Exploration and recreation.
A. Whites are more explorative and interested in scientific discovery than are Chinese.
B. Whites are more active and recreational than Chinese, who are more task-focused.
IV-2. Storytelling, art, and fantasy.
A. Whites are more imaginative in literature and the arts.
B. Whites are more technologically imaginative.
IV-3. Tests of perception, categorization, and reasoning.
A. Tests indicate that Whites perceive more abstractly than Chinese.
B. Whites perceive objects more discretely and recognize them better in novel contexts; Chinese perceive scenes more concretely and memorize background details better.
C. Whites more actively focus upon objects and consider their properties.
D. Whites more associate objects according to their effects/function than their context.
E. Whites apply principles more robustly, even when implausible, thus considering more potentialities.
F. Whites consider and resolve contradictions more robustly.
IV-4. Language: Analytic clarity versus ornate form.
A. White language is more analytic and abstract; Chinese is more pictographic and concrete.
B. Chinese are more concerned with writing’s form and context.
C. Chinese language and writing is more ambiguous.
IV-5. Expository and scientific writing.
A. Whites axiomatized principles into degrees of abstraction, while Chinese made superficial correlations.
B. Whites scrutinize and debate principles and assertions more robustly than do Chinese.
IV-6. Religion and superstition.
A. Chinese are more susceptible to superstitious claims, because they are less conscious of contradictions with natural principles.
B. Judeo-Christianity is a relatively plausible religion that generally accepts natural laws.
C. Chinese religions and superstitions are more extensive and difficult to swallow.
D. Superstition deeply permeates Chinese people’s everyday activities.
E. Superstition even pervades Chinese medicine.
F. Chinese take superstitious luck far more seriously than do Whites.
IV-7. Gambling and carelessness.
A. Chinese gambling and superstition are intertwined.
B. Chinese are more reckless gamblers than Whites.
C. Chinese are more careless generally than Whites.
IV-8. Proficiency in memory and skill, and Chinese underachievement.
A. Chinese are more skilled than Whites at all tasks not requiring creativity or power athletics.
B. Explanation of the moderate Chinese performance on verbal tests: a need for creative interpretation of writing.
C. Chinese excellence in math and science is due to visuo-spatial ability, not creativity.
D. The Chinese ability set is comparable to that of autistic savants.
E. Chinese underachieve during careers, likely due to inferior creativity and judgement.
V. Whites have been more innovative than Chinese in all fields.
Introduction: Overview of Europe’s ascension.
V-1. Due to its greater agricultural challenges, Europe did not urbanize until about 1000AD, allowing China a technological lead.
A. The real question of comparative history: How did China get a lead on Europe? The answer: agricultural advantage.
B. The oldest civilizations of the world are all based on floodplains, the ideal environments for agriculture.
C. China’s large agricultural advantages over Europe.
D. China was well urbanized by about 1000BC.
E. Urbanization is a boon to technological progress.
F. The classical Greco-Roman world surpassed China despite being only a periphery of Europe, dependent on grain imports from Africa.
G. After the founding population of the Roman Empire intermixed into oblivion, it could not be held together.
H. Mainland Europe, barely changed by the Roman Empire, gradually developed its agricultural technology.
I. Europe urbanized at about 1000AD.
V-2. Europe’s technological innovation has been far superior to China’s.
A. China, which had connections with the old western world, achieved many early, basic inventions.
B. Much of China’s best creative work was done in its ancient past, which indicates subsequent genetic change toward lower creativity.
C. Europe developed rapidly, surpassing China’s general technological level by 1500.
D. The bases of Whites’ technological superiority: creative utilization and creative design.
E. Basic devices are as good as the creative uses made of them; Whites developed and utilized key devices more robustly than did Chinese.
F. Whites surged ahead in technological fields based on creative design; China retained a lead in fields based on subtle knowledge and experience.
G. Review of Europe’s technological prowess in 1500: 1. Architecture 2. Power machinery 3. Mechanical clocks 4. Movable type printing 5. Instrument-making 6. Weaponry 7. Mining 8. Ship-building.
H. White science and technology merged in Europe’s Industrial Revolutions.
I. White science and technology created the modern world.
J. Despite enormous transfers and ongoing theft of White technology, China continues to lag.
V-3. Whites are also superior to the Chinese at scientific, institutional, and artistic innovation.
A-D: Science.
A. Whites scientifically investigated, analyzed, and classified the world much more than Chinese.
B. The White Scientific Revolution.
C. The Chinese scientific record has been paltry in comparison to Whites’.
D. Claims of Chinese scientific achievements are much exaggerated.
E-H: Government and education.
E. White governments are more representative, embedded, and stronger than Chinese.
F. Whites have led the world in governmental innovations.
G. Europe has long been superior to China in book production, education, and literacy.
H. China’s despotic government was deficient in many respects, and declined over time.
I-K: Industry, trade, and finance.
I. White governments actively supported industry and trade, while China stifled it.
J. Whites have led the world in economic innovation and development.
K. Whites have long had superior industry, trade, wages, and GDP to China.
L-M: Artistic innovation.
L. Whites have had more eminent artists than Chinese.
M. Whites have made many major innovations in the arts.
V-4. Arguments.
Introduction: Anti-White propaganda with a familiar theme.
A. Argument: “China’s superior trade balance with Europe in the 18th century, by which they obtained a lot of Europe’s silver in trade for its commodities, shows that it was technologically/ industrially superior at this late point in time.”
1. Europe was in fact economically superior to China in the 18th century, and imported from China mostly raw materials.
2. China restricted imports but wanted silver, a valuable commodity.
3. Europe’s silver trade with China was just an aspect of its international trade dominance.
B. Argument: “Europe’s industrial success was due to its privileged access in its colonies to raw materials such as cotton, sugar, and silver, to customers, and to its exploitation of slave labor.”
1. Europe’s development of resources into products was a consequence of its technology; its colonies were unnecessary and hardly worth the costs.
2. Colonies were only a small factor in Britain’s industrial success, and Britain usually had to pay fair market value for the materials it imported.
3. Northern Europe which industrialized got little of the supposed “windfalls” of precious metals and slaves; China had plenty of cheap labor.
4. China possessed enormous domestic supplies of raw materials that Europe lacked, including cotton and sugar, and a bigger market.
5. China obtained a great bounty of de facto colonial acquisitions in the 17th-18th centuries.
C. Argument: “Europe’s Industrial Revolution was due to the good fortune of Britain having a lot of coal located near industrial areas.”
1. The Industrial Revolution, in Britain and elsewhere in Europe, was not dependent on coal.
2. Britain’s innovation drove its Industrial Revolution; the location of coal deposits hardly mattered.
3. China had more coal deposits than Britain and every opportunity to develop them.
D. Argument: “Britain’s industrial success was due to its cheap energy and high wages that induced the replacement of human labor with machines.”
1. Britain’s industrial success was due to the innovation and skill of her people; its wages were high because its labor productivity was high.
2. The skill of British craftsmen was renowned throughout Europe, and they commanded higher wages everywhere.
3. Britons innovated irrespective of labor costs, and Britain’s highest wages shifted to areas having more innovation and industry.
E. Argument: “China’s decline was due to European opium trade and the Opium Wars, and the consequent drain of China’s silver.”
1. China’s decline had been going on for centuries, the trade wars were short, and China was largely responsible for opium proliferation.
2. The amount and effects of China’s silver drain due to opium are much exaggerated; China’s real currency problem was its lousy monetary system.
3. Chinese government and military officials fully collaborated with opium trade and distribution, as well as domestic production.
4. Given the Chinese high demand and extensive collaboration, stopping the opium trade to China was impossible.
5. The Anglo-Chinese Wars were launched against China’s unfair trade and negotiation policies, not its opium embargo.
6. The Anglo-Chinese Wars shocked the insular Chinese into engaging with the modern world.
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The purpose of this essay.
The purpose of this essay is not to bash the Chinese people. It is, rather, to elucidate the qualities of the White people whom I love, and to thereby, hopefully, inspire some of us to support the Cause of averting our impending extinction. I don’t think it is enough to just say Whites are a unique and worthy folk. Some specificity is needed. I could just say that Whites are “relatively” trusting, compassionate, moral, cooperative, creative, innovative, etc. But every people has these qualities to some extent or other, and the difference of degree I indicate has little meaning without some substantive comparison. I believe that the only way to really substantiate the White qualities I assert is to compare them with their counterparts in the one other race that has a comparable intelligence and historical record, the Chinese.
My interest in the nature of ideas.
I’m an introspective person. I’ve been contemplating how my mind works, as sort of a hobby, since I was in junior high at 13, and have been formulating principles thereof since I became a dedicated Spinozist at 15. That was more than ten years before I became racially aware. I’m well past 40 now. The principles of idea formation discussed in section III are my original work, though I would assume that others have published similar ideas. These principles (and others) have long resided in my head and in my numerous spiral notepads. I did not develop them ad hoc as a basis for my assertion that Whites are more creative than Chinese.
A word on the import of trust.
Addressing my compatriots in the movement to secure the existence of our people and a future for White children: I know that some of you will be put off by my emphasis on the trait of trust. Some of you think that trust is the worst trait we’ve got, the cause of all our troubles. But upon reflection trust can be seen to be the basis of all the moral sentiment that distinguishes our people and makes us worth saving. I’ll explain. Of course people love their family. A mother rat has compassion for its babies, though probably not for anyone else. Of course people are considerate toward their ingroup of friends and acquaintances whom they know well. And of course people follow the rules/laws that their organization or government has prescribed, that they have agreed to. But these basic instincts, agreements, and civil actions do not reach the level of moral conduct. Moral conduct is selfless behavior, having an (opportunity-) cost to oneself, that a person undertakes for the well-being of someone he doesn’t know, of people outside his ingroup, of his society or his posterity in general. To have moral sentiment, a person must have goodwill toward unfamiliar people. We make judgments on the merits of individuals we meet and learn about, on how deserving they are of our goodwill. But what determines our goodwill towards those we do not know, those who are unfamiliar? Trust. Our level of trust that they are ‘one of us’, that they are related. Our level of trust that they are trustworthy. Our level of trust that they are good, compassionate, moral people. Our level of trust that our goodwill is reciprocated by them, that our good deeds will ultimately rebound as everyone does their part to contribute to the well-being of our common society, our nation. Trust is the basis of moral sentiment and conduct.
As is frequently pointed out by those concerned for the plight of our dear folk, our most distinctive and precious trait—trust—has been perverted by our enemies, to induce us to trust the untrusting and untrustworthy aliens who seek to devour our fair nations. In our native environment of rural Europe, extending trust to a hardy man who offered his work or requested a helping hand was a good policy. Extending trust and moral sentiment to fellow Whites is the natural and proper attitude for us to have. But extending it to a similar degree to nonwhites is a grave folly. We must learn to draw this crucial distinction, or we and our trusting way of life will perish.
Two basic differences between Whites and Chinese.
White and Chinese differences are based on two basic character traits: trust and explorativity. Whites are more aggressive and curious, and more socially outgoing and compassionate. Chinese are more timid and task-focused, and more socially solidary and in/out-group conscious. Whites are more trusting and empathetic, meaning they are more moral and cooperative, their societies are freer, and their governments are more representative and embedded in society. Chinese are less trusting and empathetic, meaning they are more selfish, their societies are more hierarchical, and their governments are more despotic and corrupt. Whites are more explorative and curious about their environs, making them more eager to explore, to play, and to consider and experiment with novel ideas. Chinese are more task-focused and have higher memory-based intelligence, making them better learners and more persistent and skilled at tasks having a definite objective. Whites’ higher creativity leads to greater innovation in science and technology, including institutional and cultural. Chinese higher intelligence leads to superiority at all productive skills not requiring power athletics.
I. The evolutionary basis of White-Chinese differences in trust and explorativity: rural versus urban agricultural environments.
The disparity between Whites and Chinese on the traits of trust and explorativity arose from their differing environments: the cold, rugged, heavily forested lands of Europe and the warm, alluvial plains of China’s great river deltas. Areas of fertile and level soil were scattered about in Europe [1], while China’s large alluvial plains where its dense population was concentrated were easily worked and extremely fertile [2].
Europeans required more land to harvest sufficient food under their challenging conditions for agriculture [3]. They pioneered independent homesteads and pastures, sowing crops during their short growing season and subsisting partly on animal husbandry and hunter-gathering. Chinese attained high-yield agriculture and high population densities precociously, and soon came to rely on large irrigation projects closely coordinated with neighbors under government management [4].
Rural, independent Europeans had a relative abundance of natural resources such as land, forests, and wildlife [5]. The challenge in Europe was to creatively develop these resources in their harsh environment, which included making compacts with distant neighbors to assist with labor and equipment needs. There was always more marginal land and more resources that could be worked for a living, so congestion and conflicts were limited [6]. Strangers in these environs who made overtures were likely to be vigorous, fairly independent and trustworthy.
Urban, interdependent Chinese lived among a concentration of people who managed and fully developed available natural resources, leading to shortages of resources [7]. The challenge in China was to obtain as large a share as possible of a finite pool of resources and goods [8]. This was done by working one’s small plot adeptly [9], by maintaining close relationships (alliances) with one’s clan and governors, and/or by extracting levies as a governor [10]. Strangers in these environs who made overtures were less likely to be independent and trustworthy, and more likely to be desperate.
Higher trust was favored in Europe because its more independent people were more trustworthy, and cooperative working relationships often had to be sought out and formed. In China, extended family and neighbors lived closeby, and work projects were often supervised by government. With China’s more intensive conflict for scarcer resources, extending trust and compassion to a stranger, to anyone outside one’s clan, was more risky and costly. As a defensive measure, Chinese developed solidary, authoritarian social groups based on extended family, with moral standards conditioned on ingroup/outgroup status [11]. Europeans developed a broader morality and cooperated more freely with society members at large.
Higher curiosity and explorativity was favored in Europe because it had a greater variety of accessible terrains and resources that could be developed in various ways. Chinese in their alluvial plains had fewer such opportunities and, with resource scarcity, greater need to conserve energy for essential, productive tasks. China’s environment instead favored skill, efficiency, and persistence. Any innovations or advantages gained by Chinese initiative were quickly appropriated by clan and neighbors; while European homesteads succeeded or failed according to their own creativity. The explorativity of Europeans ranged from pioneering new lands, to experimenting with new materials and devices, to considering new, innovative ideas.
1. • “A less dense population may have helped to avoid the distortions of political centrism. Areas of fertile and level soil were scattered about the map of Europe. These productive areas formed the cores of the most successful political units, the most successful of all becoming the strategic centres of the nation-states. The topographical structure of the continent, its mountain chains, coasts and major marshes, formed boundaries at which states expanding from the core areas could meet and pause. These natural barriers helped to hold the ring between the varied ethnic and linguistic groups making up the European peoples.” [Jones 87:226]
2. • “The population of China has always exceeded that of Europe at the corresponding date. Densities in the settled regions bear no comparison, since ninety-six percent of the Chinese total is located in less than twenty-five percent of the area.” [Jones 87:212]
• “Some two thousand years ago, perhaps 60 million people crowded what was to become the northern edge of China—a huge number for a small territory. This number more or less held over the next millennium, but then, from about the tenth to the beginning of the thirteenth century, almost doubled, to around 120 million.” [Landes 98:23]
• “The fact is that the world’s premodern urban history has been chiefly a Chinese phenomenon…” [Stover 76:86]
• On the great fertility of China’s alluvial plains, see section V-1.A-D and its sources.
3. • See section V-1.B-C and its sources.
• “In East Asia an acre of land was enough to support a family, such was the efficiency of rice cultivation, whereas in England the average figure was closer to twenty acres.” [Ferguson 11:26]
• “The point is that in a rice economy it is easier to survive on a tiny plot as well as less easy to survive without one. If one mobilised the working power of every member of the household and took up the various possibilities to earn extra income that China’s rice agriculture presented, a piece of land that in the West would be considered as not much more than a garden, could suffice as a basis for subsistence.” [Vries 13:181]
4. • Good discussion of the development of Chinese governmental control and management in [Landes 98:23-8].
• “Harris observes that the six most likely regions of pristine state development [including China] all featured circumscribed zones of production which present ‘special difficulties to villages that might have sought to escape from the growing concentration of power in the hands of overly aggressive redistributor war chiefs’.” [Jones 87:10]
• “In China a similar pattern repeated itself along the Yellow River. By 2500 bc thousands of late Neolithic villages spread out along the river, and as irrigation agriculture began to be practiced, kingdoms arose. Yü the Great, the putative founder of the semimythical first dynasty (Hsia), is legendary in China as the ruler who “controlled the waters.” The Shang (Yin) dynasty (1520–1030 bce), which marks the documented beginning of Chinese civilization, made itself master of the Yellow River plain by dint of extensive irrigation works. Later, engineers brought irrigation techniques to the more southern Yangtze River. Rice cultivation spread northward from south China and also involved hydraulic control. One of the roles of government throughout Chinese history was to build and maintain waterworks; as a result, dikes, dams, canals, and artificial lakes (such as the 165-acre Lake Quebei) proliferated across China… To effect these installations, massive corvée labor was extracted from the peasantry. ” [McClellan 06:36-7]
5. • “The population density of Gaul in the sixth century has been estimated at 5.5 per square kilometer, that of Germany and Britain at 2.2 and 2.0 respectively. The scattered inhabitants of these cold lands evidently did not live well; their skeletons indicate malnutrition. Famine, plague, and typhus were probably even more endemic here than in the South. Yet this northern region had important natural assets: abundant forests, fast-growing vegetation, accessible metal ores, and numerous rivers and streams, many swift flowing and ice free, with potential beyond transportation and communication.” [Gies 94:41]
• “The grasslands and forests of temperate Europe and Eurasia contrast sharply with the steppes and arid plains of the Fertile Crescent, and the spread of agriculture northward and westward required new strains of plants and animals and different social and technological adaptations. Methods had to be developed to clear the dense northern forests, and in some areas the rich hunting, gathering, and fishing resources formed such a productive food base that there was considerable “resistance” to the introduction of agriculture.” [Wenke 80:304]
• “Europe’s very considerable geological, climatic, and topographical and variety endowed it with a dispersed portfolio of resources. This conduced to long-distanced, multi-lateral trade in bulk loads of utilitarian goods… Bulk trade was also favored by an abnormally high ratio of navigable routeways to surface area, a function of a long, indented coastline and many navigable rivers.” [Jones 87:227]
• “More interesting than the differences in population totals and density was the European persistence in maintaining a relatively high consumption of draught animals, livestock products and woodland products, all of them heavy users of land in competition with the growing of cereals.” [Jones 87:8-9]
6. • “Harris observes that the six most likely regions of pristine state development [including China] all featured circumscribed zones of production which present ‘special difficulties to villages that might have sought to escape from the growing concentration of power in the hands of overly aggressive redistributor war chiefs’. European agricultural society was able to avoid a comparable history of authoritarianism – a kind of political infantilism – by virtue of an open-ended productive environment of forest land and rainfall farming.” [Jones 87:10]
7. • “China’s long experience of crowded community and family life produced a body of accepted norms of conduct. The individual had first of all to accept the austerity of a bamboo-and-vegetable (as opposed to our iron-and-meat) standard of material wealth. This fostered in him the virtue of frugality.” [Fairbank 76:135]
• “Relative to its heat efficiency and hence its price, wood is too bulky to carry far from navigable water. Fuel was so scarce that specialists sold hot water in the villages, Chinese houses were so cold that the poor wore heavily padded clothes and the rich fur-lined garments. The shortage of wood was such that the poor, and sometimes the rich, had no furniture. In the old settled areas, fuel wood, construction timber, fodder and fertilizer were alike acutely scarce because the land was settled so densely and had to be given over to rice production.” [Jones 87:212-3]
• “Often [in Chinese history], where there was in principle the possibility of improving per-acre yields, this was ruled out in practice by resource shortages. An example is the dry-farming of Hopei and Shantung. Investigations in the 1930s suggest that it could with profit have used more animal manure; but the supply of manure was inadequate because of the shortage of grazing land, which in turn reflected the need of a dense population to turn pasture into arable.” [Elvin 73:306]
8. • “China’s arable land is very limited. Traditional ethics discourages any enterprise outside one’s own town… China’s economy has been characterised by mediocrity and monotony, or to use R.H. Tawney’s observation, a maximum population competing for a minimum of resources.” [Qian 85:109]
• “In the Chinese tradition, however, the economic man will do best not by increasing production but by increasing his own share of what has already been produced. He will rise by competing against his fellows directly rather than by creating new wealth through the conquest of nature, or the increased exploitation of her resources, or applications of improved technologies. This is because the Chinese economy has had from early times a maximum of people competing for a minimum of natural resources, instead of great continents and new industries to develop. The incentive for innovative enterprise, to win a market for new products, had been less than the incentive for monopoly, to control an existing market by paying by paying for an official license to do so.” [Fairbank 76:47-8]
• “Aristocratic (despotic) [Asian] empires were characteristically squeeze operations: when the elites wanted more, they did not think in terms of gains in productivity. Where would these have come from? They simply pressed (and oppressed) harder, and usually found some hidden juice. Sometimes they miscalculated and squeezed too hard, and that could mean flight, riot, and opportunities for rebellion… Meanwhile only societies with room for multiple initiatives, from below more than from above, could think in terms of a growing pie.” [Landes 98:32]
9. • “[T]he nature of rice culture favored the small owner—farmer or permanent tenant—for the plowing, transplanting, fertilizing, and weeding of rice fields gets a crop in proportion to the skill, care, and effort of the farmer.” [Fairbank 76:31]
• “By far the greatest part of agricultural land consisted of millions of small family farms. Those often consisted of extremely fragmented tiny plots. In Northern China the small peasant-owner was predominant. In the South, where plots were even smaller, the small peasant-tenant was much more common. For sure, there were many individuals, families, lineages or clans, especially in the South of China, who owned large plots of land. But the actual exploitation of the land nearly always took place in small plots. There was no primogeniture, so that when the head of the family died plots were often split up.” [Vries 03:28]
; “At the end of the eighteenth century at least 80 per cent of the Chinese population still worked in agriculture, almost without exception on small tracts of land, which they owned or leased.” [31]
; “Considering the high yields of arable land [in China], it is not profitable to reserve land for [draught animals] and better to use human labour instead. Whenever possible land was used for cultivation. Besides, growing rice is a matter of meticulous cultivation that requires constant attention of skilled human labour and not brute, repetitive, mechanical force… Milling is normally done by hand and not in big mills, as is the case in Western Europe.” [57]
10. • See section II-8.B-C and its sources.
• Good review of Chinese historical governmental exploitations in [Stover 76:108-14]: regressive taxation, the “squeeze” system for ‘services’, rack renting, customs and tolls along rivers and land routes, state business monopolies, etc.
• Exploitation could be done even by peasants. Elvin writes that Chinese peasants in the 19th century continuously competed for status in order to collect rents, via “buying when prices are low and selling when prices are high”, extending usurous loans, and hiring labor. “Everywhere there was a constant competition, without benefit to society as a whole, in which the fortunes of individual peasant families rose and fell. It was a society that was both egalitarian and riven with mutual jealousies. The economic closeness of exploiter and exploited, and the lack of any ideologically sanctioned inevitability in the social differences between them, made for hostility rather than harmony.” [Elvin 73:258-60]
11. • See section II-5.A and its sources.
• “The anthropologist George Foster discussed the concept of the ‘limited good’, a basic belief system of peasant communities that the goods and resources of this world are in fixed supply. Consequently, everyone is in competition with everyone else for the most they can get. This view of the world promotes a suspicous attitude towards others, discouraging association with anyone whose fate is not linked to one’s own. This argument is compatible with the orientation of the Chinese towards collective activities and certainly fits their agricultural heritage.” [Bond 91:36]
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II. The higher trust and compassion of Whites engenders greater morality and freedom.
Introduction: The nature of morality.
While of course there is a disagreement on just what conduct is in a society’s best interests, and anyone will behave ‘morally’ when their personal interests happen to coincide with society’s, moral behavior is essentially (in)action taken for the benefit of others at some (opportunity-) cost to oneself, i.e. kindness or consideration that is not compelled and does not gain a direct reward. Conversely, immorality is (in)actions taken for the benefit of oneself at some (opportunity-) cost to others, offenses not necessarily egregious enough to constitute a crime. People behave morally for several reasons, all based on trust and acceptance. People can feel compassion for others, with an urge to avert or relieve their (potential) suffering and promote their well-being, a concern beyond their own family and ingroup. People can want the approval and love of others that moral conduct merits, and have an aversion to others’ antipathy if acting immorally. And people can have an abstract expectation of reciprocity by society in general: a faith that good deeds will rebound as everyone ultimately does their part to contribute to the public good.
A moral people has much concern for their community and nation, and optimism for winning their approval and love. A moral people does not expect direct reciprocation for every kind and honest deed, nor a reward for every act of sacrifice for the national welfare, nor a payment for every contribution to society. A moral people respects all members of their society, trusting others and treating them fairly. They do not form solidary social groups having an ‘us versus them’ attitude, with lower standards of morality practiced toward those outside the group. They do not receive a ‘free pass’ for immoral conduct directed against members of society outside their ingroup. They do not selfishly exploit fellow community members who happen to be weaker or less well connected to those in power. And therefore, a moral people enjoys a community spirit and robust cooperation throughout society, without a need for strict governmental discipline that restricts freedom.
Of course, the last thing a moral people should do is accept immoral people into their society, who will only take advantage of their trusting and kindly sentiments, and thereby erode them.
II-1. Chinese are more apprehensive and timid; Whites are more outgoing and aggressive.
Chinese have a more timid, introverted personality type than Whites [1], consistent with lower trust, that is evident even in infancy. White American babies are more aggressive and active than are Chinese American counterparts, who are more apprehensive and closely attached to their mother in unfamiliar situations [2]. Whites are more friendly and outgoing toward strangers, while Chinese are reluctant to talk to strangers and often engage in conversation through intermediaries [3]. Whites tend to confront adversaries directly to resolve differences, sometimes through fights; whereas Chinese avoid confrontation as much as possible, often resolving disputes through intermediaries [4], and rarely fight physically even when a shouting match ensues [5]. In contrast to Whites, Chinese have no tradition of vigorous sports and rarely play them [6]. Chinese submit to authority more readily than do Whites [7], though they will revolt *en masse* when oppression becomes intolerable [8]. The Chinese aversion to physical confrontation is likely a ‘survival strategy’ evolved in the context of China’s high level of social conflict: those inclined to fight when offended could not last long.
1. • “All the studies reviewed, using either a self-report or a projective technique, have unanimously shown that Chinese people in general are inclined to be more restrained, cautious, patient, and self-contained, and less impulsive, excitable, spontaneous, and natural than Americans. Previous research has demonstrated that these temperamental differences seem to have a genetic basis. Freedman and Freedman (1969), for example, applied neurological, sensory, and motor tests to Chinese American and Caucasian American infants at a mean age of 33 hours—an age at which any differences in maternal handling could not have any appreciable effect. Chinese infants were reported to be more calm and impassive, even when a cloth was placed over the face, and to habituate more readily to a blinking-light stimulus.” [Bond 86:143]
• “Data from many personality tests show that Chinese are generally less sociable and extraverted, and more ‘shy’ and socially anxious than Americans in particular and Westerners in general. I suggest that these differences arise mainly from an indifference to strangers and those who are not connected by blood or long association. Indeed, Chinese show an intense attachment to these primary groups, rather than a broad spread of looser attachments… The Chinese avoid those who are unfamiliar but are intensely involved with family and old friends.” [Bond 91:36-7]
• “The turbulent shouting and jumping about from the instant of dismissal, such as we see among American kindergarten and lower grade pupils, does not prevail among Chinese children of the same age. They play at times – with kites or dolls, or at beating with sticks any roaming dog that can be cornered – but the excited jumping about known among us is rarely seen.” [Tow 114]
2. • See the citations above.
• “[Jerome Kagan] and his collaborators studied matched groups of Chinese and Cauacasian American infants for two years in a wide range of controlled but natural situations. To quote from David Ho’s conclusions about this rigorous study: “The Chinese infants… were less vocal, less active, less likely to smile to many (but not all) of the laboratory episodes, and more apprehensive in social and separation situations; they were quieter, stayed closer to the mother, played less when they were with unfamiliar children or adults, and cried more often following maternal departure.”” [Bond 91:11]
3. • “Chinese are reluctant to talk with strangers and will rarely initiate a conversation with someone they do not know. Americans, by contrast, place a high value on conversation as a vehicle for establishing relationships and hence find the Chinese stand-offish. The Chinese, however, make a critical distinction between established relationships and others. They communicate mainly with people they know and, within this circle of acquaintances, with family members in particular… They ignore other people or regard any who initiate conversation with suspicion.
Of course, Chinese do make new acquaintances. Usually, however, an intermediary known to both parties makes these introductions… They will channel much conversation through this intermediary, especially during the first meeting.” [Bond 91:52]
• Intermediaries are regularly used even for marriage arrangements: “Firstly enquiries were made in a girl’s family by a go-between acting on behalf of a family seeking a bride. Then horoscopes were sought by the go-between. Then the girl’s horoscope was matched with the boy’s, to see whether the marriage was made in heaven…” [Dawson 78:142]
• “The character meaning “outside,” has in China a scope and a significance which can only be comprehended by degrees. The same kind of objection which is made to a foreigner because he comes from an “outside” country, is made to a villager because he comes from an “outside” village… If a traveller happens to get astray and arrives at a village after dark, particulary if the hour is late, he will often find that no one will even come out of his house to give a simple direction.” [Smith 94:250-1]
• “One thing that freaked him out was the fact that he would make eye contact, smile and say “hello” to passing Chinese…but not a single person responded or smiled back (instead staring back with confused looks).
Like Karl, many Westerners have a hard time adjusting to this seemingly cold behavior. Indeed, it’s easy for the first time visitor to China to label the Chinese as unfriendly, or worse, rude (by their cultural standards anyway). But don’t be offended—it’s not you. The Chinese generally don’t smile at any strangers—foreign or Chinese…
My point is that, the average Chinese person who you meet on the street can seem cold and unfriendly. Bus driver and other civil servants in the cities who deal with the public on a daily basis can be especially dismissive and unhelpful (even abusive). Try not to take it personally…”
• www.china-mike.com/chinese-culture/understanding-chinese-mind/in-out-groups/
4. • “The emphasis on relationship and affect during verbal exchanges also means that [Chinese] people avoid confrontational, argumentative talk. In Chinese culture the light of truth does not arise from the clash of opposing opinions… Instead, people use their superior as a filter or arbitrator. Traditional court practice was for the magistrate to hear the evidence [separately from each party]. Superiors in any organization, be it family, club, or business, are constantly assuming this magistrate’s role with conflicting subordinates who will not confront one another. There is thus what appears to those from an instrumental tradition of talk an inordinate amount of backbiting, gossiping, innuendo, and rumour in Chinese groups.
The Western tradition of straight talk, open debate, friendly disagreement, and loyal opposition has no place in an interpersonal system focused on relationship rather than ‘truth’, given that relationships are mostly hierarchical…” [Bond 91:54-5]
; “The basic Chinese orientation towards any form of assault is encapsulated in the stark aphorism: ‘It is better to be a dog in times of peace than a man in times of war’. Since fighting usually breaks out over a dispute about some resource, an attack signals a breakdown in the social pattern by which privileges and responsibilities are assigned. Given that the Chinese order relationships by hierarchy, the ensuing struggle is often therefore a fight to the finish followed by vindictive retaliation to re-establish undisputed ranking. With this social logic and their history, it is not surprising that Chinese avoid open hostility like the plague. It portends the dreaded spectre of luan (chaos).
Rates for violent crime in Chinese societies are therefore low…” [65]
• “The research of Kwok Leung has shown that whenever such incendiary conditions arise, Chinese respondents will opt for non-confrontational approaches to their resolution to a greater extent than, say, Canadians or Dutch. These strategies include ‘indirect’ confrontation through mediators or arbitrators, or avoiding reactions, like falsely promising or withdrawing and waiting…” [66]
• On the Chinese military’s tendency to resolve disputes with a minimum of actual fighting, see section II-6.C and its sources.
5. • “Encounters between contending parties do, of course, occasionally degenerate into open abuse and name-calling. Although these verbal slinging matches (ma zhan) are infrequent, they typically arise in public situations involving strangers, such as hawkers and their customers, motorists, and pedestrians, fellow travellers on a bus, and so forth. Both sides unleash a torrent of shouting and criticism, drawing a great crowd of bemused onloookers. Despite the provocations these verbal duels rarely lead to physical assault. Usually, of course, friends are present to restrain the two parties, but in any case the pay-off appears to reside in verbally battering one’s opponent, not in humbly him or her physically.” [Bond 91:66]
• A similar but more colorful description of the way Chinese confrontations consist of vicious, hysterical language, but rarely actual fighting, is given in [Smith 94:219-22].
6. • See section IV-I.B and its sources.
• “No history of Chinese sports has ever been attempted, perhaps because so little has been written about them by Confucian-minded scholars, and also because organized sports seem in fact to have played quite a minor role in Chinese life.” [Bodde 91:292]
; “[T]he field of open sports reveals several significant differences between China and the West. In China physical sports have almost always played a very subordinate role; contact sports have been rare; spectator sports barely existent; and competition between individuals has often been muted by subordination to group competition.” [307-8]
• “Of the differences we see between various races, this absence of physical courage in the Chinese is perhaps a characteristic instinctively repellent to Anglo-Saxons. It is coupled, of course, with Chinese distaste for any kind of vigorous physical endeavor. No one ever saw or heard of a typical Chinese engaging in any sort of sport requiring activity. They are the one large group of the world’s population having absolutely no traditions of physical contests for the mere exhilaration of feeling the play of muscles in friendly rivalry… With the tens of thousands of Chinese men in foreign schools equipped with gymnasiums and often with physical education directors, it is interesting that there are no Chinese athletes. And even among the Chinese adopted and brought up in foreign families, reluctance to exercise appears strong. Those [Asian] tennis players you see on American campuses are nearly always Japanese, not Chinese.” [Townsend 33:104]
7. • An American diplomat in China, Ralph Townsend, wrote in 1933: “Heedless toward the vague and disconnected appeals of small reform groups for collective action, 395 million Chinese – out of a possible population of 400 million – constitute the most easily intimidated people in the world. Day after day advantage is taken of this submissiveness by bandits, war lords, pirates, wholesale extortion gangs, and duly accredited provincial and central government officials,…” [Townsend 33:227]
• And a Canadian living in China, Troy Parfitt, wrote in 2012: “Having lived in Chinese society for as long as I have, there are quite a few things I have gotten entirely used to and don’t find at all alien anymore. Pliability isn’t one of them. It never ceases to amaze me, especially in light of the fact there is so little trust in the Chinese world, just how eager people are to submit to an authority figure—to any authority figure, even one whose job it is to lead people through karaoke and tell them the name of the area they are passing through. Of course, in this case, it was completely harmless, but such submission, historically speaking, has been disastrous—and yet it continues; the pattern is never seen.” [Parfitt 12:98]
• “In our earlier discussion of religious persecution [in China], it was noted that little or no attempt was ever made by the institutional religions to resist… Even more, however, it reflected the complete acceptance on their part of the authority of ruler and state in ideological matters. The same also seems to have been true when one turns to the nonreligious literary proscriptions: no one ever seems to have seriously resisted the Ch’ien-lung inquisition or the other destructions of literature that have been cited. Unquestioning acceptance of the emperor’s total authority was prevalent in early as well as late stages of the empire…” [Bodde 91:189-90]
8. • See section II-6.C and its sources
————
II-2. Whites’ greater trust and honor enables freer communication and transactions; while cooperation among Chinese is problematic.
There is much additional evidence of lower trust and honor among Chinese than Whites. Whereas Whites’ homes are relatively exposed to visitors, Chinese homes are usually enclosed in walls [1]. Whereas Whites are usually open to answer inquiries of visitors about their identity and the people and places of their town, Chinese are very reluctant to answer such questions [2]. Whereas White businesses are managed by any group of individuals with compatible talents who get together, Chinese businesses are mainly owned and managed by members of the same family, since outsiders are not trusted [3]. In some cases when a Chinese outside the owning family was employed as a branch manager, his family was actually held hostage to ensure loyalty [4]. Whereas Whites typically make deals through direct talks, Chinese typically negotiate via a third party mediator to ensure each side upholds his end [5]. Chinese emperors actually assigned Europeans to collect *their own* custom fees at the border, since fellow Chinese were not trusted to do it [6]. The greater trust and honor of Whites is evident in the much lower interest rates for loans they have had throughout history [7], and in the greater reliability of their currency and specie [8]. While Whites readily form large, cooperative groups, Chinese society is very fractious [9].
1. • “The lofty walls which enclose all premises in Chinese, as in other Oriental cities and towns, are another exemplification of the same traits of suspicion. If it is embarrassing for a foreigner to know how to speak to a Chinese of such places as London or New York, without unintentionally conveying the notion that they are “walled cities,” it is not less difficult to make Chinese who may be interested in Western lands understand how it can be that in those countries people often have about their premises no enclosures whatever.” [Smith 94:244]
• “The solidarity of the family group is also reflected in the traditional design of the large Chinese house which has walls screening it from the outside world, in contrast with the European house which is generally much more exposed to the community at large. Within the house, on the other hand, rooms lead into one another and there is much less privacy than in the modern European house.” [Dawson 78:139]
2. • A Canadian traveller in China reported the prevalent refusal of Chinese to answer his simple inquiries, in [Parfitt 12:36,81,100-2,196,221]. “It brings me no joy to report this, but this is the way it is: it can seem that every single time you ask for information or the availability of some product or service in China you are supplied with an automatic negative response: ‘No,’ ‘I don’t know,’ ‘I’m not sure,’ ‘We don’t have that,’ ‘We can’t do that,’ ‘You can’t do that,’ ‘It can’t be helped,’ ‘It’s out of our hands,’ ‘That’s impossible,’ ‘You can’t get there from here.’… The upshot, then, is that you are left to play Twenty Questions in order to find out where the nearest toilet is.” [196]
• Arthur Smith discusses the reluctance of Chinese to answer any inquires, such as travelling directions and the whereabouts of a person, in [Smith 94:250-3,208-9]
3. • “Chinese businesses are typically owned by a founding father. Because of the difficulty in Chinese culture of trusting outsiders with capital, a core group of family members retain proprietorial rights… Given that ownership is confined to a small group of trusted family members, Chinese businesses only become large if they concentrate in one narrow sector where the owner is skilled and experienced, or when the company enjoys a politically ensured monopoly, thereby permitting inefficiency…. Given [the owner-founder’s] distrust of outsiders, he fills key positions with close associates loyal to him. This inner circle tends to comprise direct family members or those related by marriage and may not include the most competent people available.” [Bond 91:75-6]
• “[T]he Chinese found it hard to trust anyone to whom they were not related, or with whom they had no long-standing relationship. Therefore businesses tended to stay small and restricted in geographical scope; and their dealings with customers, employees and other businesses had usually to be mediated through brokers, guarantors, contractors or middlemen of some other kind.” [Elvin 73:295]
• “It will be noted in China, as in large American cities, that almost any outstanding success of Chinese enterprise is run as a one-man-boss concern, patriarchally, with little if any administration delegated to subordinates. A Chinese subordinate, under hourly scrutiny, is capable of efforts often surpassing, individually, those common in foreign companies. But a Chinese subordinate out of sight in a Chinese enterprise is a dangerous liability, an opportunist weighing the advantages of working for his employer or working covertly against him.” [Townsend 33:13-4]
4. • “When a man was appointed branch manager [of a Chinese Shansi bank], his family was kept at head office as hostages for his good behavior; and his letters to them were read by the firm. After three or four years he would go back to Shansi to present his accounts and be cross-examined by his superiors. If all had gone well, he would be rewarded and reunited with his family. If anything had gone wrong, he would have to make good the loss from his own property and his family would be detained until the firm was satisfied.” [Elvin 73:297]
5. • See [Elvin 73:295] citation, above.
• “The commercial life of the Chinese illustrates their mutual suspicion in a great variety of ways. Neither buyer nor seller trusts the other, and each for that reason thinks that his interests are subserved by putting his affairs for the time being out of his own hands into those of a third person who is strictly neutral, because his percentage will only be obtained by the completion of the bargain. No transaction is considered as made at all, until “bargain money” has been paid.” [Smith 94:254-5]
6. • “The main reliance of the Chinese central government in money is the customs receipts. The Chinese customs are managed by foreigners by a special arrangement introduced some seventy-five years ago, at the wish of the Chinese monarchy. It has recognized that the foreigners possessed adequate integrity for the work, and that with a foreign inspector-in-chief and foreign inspectors in the various ports, an honest accounting could be expected. This has proved correct, and this service, still manned by foreigners, functions as smoothly as our own, with regular remittances from the central office to Nanking.” [Townsend 33:211]
7. • On Europe’s interest rates being much lower than China’s since Medieval times, see section IV-3.J and its sources.
• “The conclusion that emerges from this survey of the various measurements of institutional efficiency is that from the late medieval period Western Europe already had a relatively efficient set of institutions, which led to low transaction costs, large-scale involvement of households in factor (and product) markets, and a high degree of market integration. In particular, the very low interest rates [compared to China] suggest that property rights were well respected, and that a relatively high level of trust was common in Western Europe, which was especially important for the development of labour and capital markets.” [Zanden 09a:28]
• “The story [of early European economic development] had an ethical aspect also. The development and spread of the contratto di commenda, as that of other partnership contracts, would not have been possible without the precondition of a spirit of mutual trust and a sense of honesty in business. The merchant to whom others entrusted their savings could easily have disappeared with the capital or cheated in business conducted in far-off markets where none of his associates had any control. But if the trader showed himself to be dishonest, after a while no one would entrust their savings to him. It was this widespread sense of honesty, strengthened by the sense of belonging to an integrated community, quite apart from clearcut legal provisions, which made possible the participation of all kinds of people with their savings in the productive process.” [Cipolla 80:198-9]
• Arthur Smith wrote in the late 19th century: “The high rate of Chinese interest, ranging from twenty-four to thirty-six or more per cent, is a proof of the lack of mutual confidence. The larger part of this extortionate exaction does not represent payment for the use of money, but insurance on risk, which is very great. The almost total lack of such forms of investments as we are so familiar with in Western lands is due not more to the lack of development of the resources of the Empire, than to the general mistrust of one another among the people. “The affairs of life hinge upon confidence,” and it is for this reason that a large class of affairs in China will for a long time to come be dissociated from their hinges, to the great detriment of the interests of the people.” [Smith 94:255-6]
8. • See section II-6.A and its sources.
• “[G]overnment efforts to introduce paper money had ended in failure three times before in Chinese history, under the Sung, under
the yuan and under the Ming. Every time China’s central government experimented with paper money it led to its over-issue, inflation and debasement, and all the chaos that goes with that… Paper money is fiduciary money – its use is based on trust, transparency and certain checks and balances. Those were oft
en lacking. During the big silver-drain crisis in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, a major reason to reject all proposals to issue paper notes (and the same goes for big coins with face values that were higher than their intrinsic values) was fear of bureaucratic corruption, fear that people would counterfeit these new moneys and lack of confidence in the state.” [Vries 15:262]
9. • See section II-5.A and its sources.
————
II-3. Compassion for the distressed is greater among Whites than Chinese.
Compassion, like trust, is hard to measure, but callousness is witnessed in China that is jarring to the sensibilities of Whites. Chinese regimes are often ruthless in their predations and impressments of their own people [1]. Chinese law enforcement is arbitrary and cruel, torturing plaintiffs as well as defendants, and sometimes killing whole families [2]. This in recent times, not only the distant past. Communist China is no exception [3].
China’s compassion deficiency extends far beyond the talons of government. When accidents occur with victims in distress, Whites usually intervene to help, but Chinese may intervene—if at all—only to take advantage of the chaos [4]. Whites tend to be indulgent toward weak members of society, but in China unfortunate folk such as cripples and enslaved daughters-in-law are typically objects of scorn [5]. Chinese girls for centuries were subjected to the horrific practice of foot-binding, that ended only recently [6]. Most Whites are compassionate toward companion animals and concerned for the welfare of endangered species, while Chinese kill them, often in gratuitously cruel ways, for use as food, clothing, or ritual medicine [7]. Whereas the majority of Whites allow their organs to be transplanted after death to save those in need, very few Chinese allow this [8]. There is evidence that Chinese do not feel pain and discomfort as acutely as Whites do, perhaps a factor in their lack of sympathy [9].
1. • “Chinese armies until recent times were much more a form of public works, created at times of crisis by the same conscription of cheap manpower that provided the corvee labor gangs for building a Great Wall, a Grand Canal, or a Burma Road.” [Fairbank 76:70]
• On the incredibly brutal 20th-century impressment and treatment of Chinese soldiers and laborers, even women, see [Townsend 33:53-6]. On the merciless exploitation and plundering of Chinese citizens by officials, see [Townsend 33:227-8,232,238-9].
• On the the brutal, mass-compulsion of Chinese farmers to grow opium (on pain of death) in the 19th-20th centuries, see section V-4.E.3 and its sources.
• Twentieth-century nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek, rival of the Communists, was also a ruthless mass-murderer: [Parfitt 12:59,157-60,327-33]
2. • On the arbitrary and hellish cruelties of 19th-20th century Chinese law enforcement, see [Townsend 33:58-61,109-12,190-1].
• See [Smith 94:210-5,229-35]; “[T]he Oriental practice of extinguishing an entire family for the crime of one of its members. Many instances of this sort were reported in connection with the T’aip’ing rebellion, and more recently… These atrocities are not, however, limited to cases of overt rebellion. In the year 1873 “a Chinese was accused and convicted of having broken open the grave of a relative of the Imperial family, in order to rob the coflin of certain gold, silver, and jade ornaments which had been buried in it. The entire family of the criminal, consisting of four generations, from a man more than ninety years of age to a female infant only a few months old, was exterminated. Thus eleven persons suffered death for the offence of one. And there was no evidence to show that any of them were parties to, or were even aware of, his crime.”” [234-5]
• More on Chinese punishing whole families for the crimes of individual members in section II-7.C and its sources.
• “The people avoided litigation in the magistrates court, where plaintiffs as well as defendents could be interrogated with prescribed forms of torture, and everyone would have to pay fees to the Yamen underlings.” [Fairbank 76:120]
• “[L]itigation was where posssible avoided. It was an expensive and disagreeable business, for the litigants were exposed to the cruelty and dishonesty of government runners and were dealt with in court in a humiliating manner.” [Dawson 78:162]
• Chinese law enforcement remains arbitrary and brutal today, with tortuous interrogations and punishments, tiny prison cells in brutal “Black Jails”, and slave labor. Video selection:
World’s Most Brutal Prison is in China.
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=lz0bb15kTkE
“Black” Jails in China.
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAPWF3BH8mE
Slavery thrives in Chinese prisons.
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=yumfVvJFUw8
China’s Black Jails Still Exist: Amnesty International.
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxYF8VwZLnE
Breaking footage : China’s Brutal Labor Camps, Part 1.
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqsY9eB1HD4
Stretch Torture Method Alive in China.
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR-vhNf_FKE
Is This What Justice Is in China?
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqK5Hrn-4Fk
China’s Gestapo: the 6-10 Office.
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=5N6il1oQm_w
• Prisoners also get their organs extracted; see section II-8.D and its sources.
3. • On the fiendish cruelties committed by the Chinese Communists, see [Parfitt 12:155-6,161-70,214-5].
• See also: [Epoch 12], [Akbar 10], [Edwards 10].
4. • The Chinese evince a stunning callousness toward people afflicted with accidents and misfortunes. “Anywhere and at almost any time in China, you can see a cart fallen on a man or a horse, or some similar accident, plentiful in the crowded streets, with curious onlookers not stirring a hand to lift the injured out of his predicament.” [Townsend 33:51]
; “For instance, a man who falls overboard from a boat not manned by members of his family or close associates need not expect to be picked up. Falling overboard, it may be mentioned, is not an infrequent occurrence among Chinese, who are naturally careless. Almost any veteran foreigner who has traveled up and down the rivers of China will be able to recount one or more cases where he has personally observed a man drown without efforts to save him by other Chinese a few feet away on shore or in a boat.
An American Consul related to me a personally witnessed occurrence at a place up the Yangtze where he was stationed, one that strikes a Westerner as incredible, but which would not impress a native Chinese as anything remarkable. It happened that a sampan loaded down with a cargo of live pigs, and crowded also with Chinese, was caught in a treacherous current and overturned a little distance from the shore. The Chinese and pigs aboard were spilled out into the water. A number of other Chinese along the shore, seeing the upset, immediately put out to the scene in their own boats, and began greedily picking up the live pigs swimming about. The drowning and pleading humans who wailed to be taken aboard were knocked on the head as fast as they swam to the arriving boats, and were all washed downstream and drowned. The Chinese minute men of the sampans returned in high glee with their unexpected catch of fresh pork, and life went on as usual.” [54-5]
; “A moneyless stranger is unwelcome anywhere in China, and in the remote areas may expect to be stoned away or driven oft by the dogs as he approaches one village after another to beg. There are no scraps to be picked up, because nobody throws away anything conceivably edible. There are no handouts for tramps, no acknowledgments of hard luck stories, no brothers sparing a dime. You will hear more than one account, in China, from foreigners who tell of flood or famine survivors being driven away or killed out-right when wandering into strange territory. Villagers fear newcomers so obviously indigent may in their desperation be more than ordinarily disposed to steal anything they could lay hands on, and think that prudence recommends nipping the possibility in the bud.” [56-7]
; “At the first warning of the [horrible mass-] epidemic, the foreign doctors had sent off to Shanghai or somewhere for anti-cholera serum. Inoculated in three doses, this is a pretty reliable preventive. The serum was obtained from some philanthropy, free or nearly free. The foreign doctors announced that when it arrived they would inoculate the poorer Chinese applicants without charge. Foreigners were of course to be charged.
But here the story begins: The serum arrived, but the Chinese government officials in Foochow promptly seized it and held it. There was a stir at once among the foreigners, and the doctors tackled vigorously the job of having the serum released at once. They reported what everyone suspected – that the government officials wanted the serum ransomed. It was useless to point out the urgency, which the Chinese officials knew as well as anybody, the emergency of course presenting just the sort of opportunity they relied upon for a living. Day after day the doctors nagged them, and day after day the officials held their trump. While this was going on, I went away for the week-end to Kuliang. The foreigners there were alarmed and impatient for their share of serum from the supply. I reported the progress of negotiations. One of the younger missionaries present, one who had spent a few years in China, was almost dumbfounded at the fiendish greed of even Chinese officials in such an emergency, with their own fellow-countrymen dying in droves every day while measures of relief were at hand. Then one of the oldest missionaries in the area spoke up, a venerable man of about forty years’ experience in China, the Reverend — —. “They’ll do it every time,” he said in substance. “You don’t know Chinese officials. They have absolutely no heart where profit is concerned. Nothing moves them.” So the Chinese continued to die in droves… Yet these same officials, if you chanced to call upon them, would receive you with almost unfailing civility.” [64-5]
• “The general omission to do anything for the relief of the drowning strikes every foreigner in China. A few years ago a foreign steamship was burned in the Yangtze River, and the crowds of Chinese who gathered to witness the event did little or nothing to rescue the passengers and crew. As fast as they made their way to the shore many of them were robbed even of the clothing which they had on, and some were murdered outright.” [Smith 94:207-8]
• “When billions of dollars of aid began streaming into China from international relief agencies after the Japanese surrender, the Nationalists simply seized it. Auctions were held, and what was not moved in this manner was traded on the black market. Even blood plasma donated by the American Red Cross was diverted to drug stores to be sold at sky-high prices.” [Parfitt 12:160]
; “The Guilin Train Station… had been an evacuation point during the war with the Japanese (the Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945), or at least theoretically [lol]. As the Japanese advanced, tens of 1000s scrambled to leave. Railway employees closed their counters and auctioned off tickets out the backdoor. This exacerbated the mayhem and several hundred people died when a locomotive steamed into the station, as they had desperately assembled on the tracks. As for the highest bidders, along with those who had bribed the Nationalist soldiers for a spot onboard, they never made it very far. The train would chug a few miles out of town and stop, whereupon the passengers would be forced off at gunpoint. The train then chugged back to the station to pick up another load.” [62-3]
• A couple of recent examples given here:
Bystanders’ Neglect of Injured Toddler Sets Off Soul-Searching on Web Sites in China.
• www.nytimes.com/2011/10/19/world/asia/toddlers-accident-sets-off-soul-searching-in-china.html
5. • “Traditional medical writings rarely discussed more severe forms of incapacity, like psychosis and mental retardation. These forms of abnormality went beyond ‘the psychopathology of everyday life’, and were a matter of some mystery as, indeed, they are everywhere. These abnormalities were a source of shame, as they were often construed as a form of supernatural punishment. Families confined their afflicted relatives to the home and made no attempts to obtain treatment for them. Even today, considerable fear, suspicion, and hostility is directed toward such persons in Chinese communities. Attempts to integrate them into residential areas through ‘half-way’ housing schemes meet spirited resistance.” [Bond 91:93]
• Arthur Smith goes into considerable detail describing the callous Chinese attitude toward “those who are in any way physically deformed” and “those who exhibit mental defects”, along with childless women, child brides, daughters-in-law, etc. in [Smith 94:196-204].
6. • The terrible cruelty of “foot-binding” (bone-breaking) young girls, which ended only in the 20th century, is fairly well known. A video:
Living History: Bound Feet Women of China
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vVb2V9xt0o
• “The tight bandages were put on in infancy and kept very tightly compressed until the girl was grown. They could not be eased day or night during twelve years or so of the growing period, and as the feet tended to enlarge in the natural processes of growth, the unremitting agony was extreme. Chinese tell you of the ceaseless wails and moans of the little girls whose feet were being kept baby size while their bodies grew.” [Townsend 33:61-3]
• “Footbinding was essentially universal in large parts of China, and the norm for respectability throughout the Han cultural imperium. During the early years of binding, pain could be severe, but girls were pushed to walk at once, and soon found that their feet ached badly only (!) at night.” [Engelen 05:337-8]
• “It was not well regarded, for example, when women, especially young women, worked outside their home… The economic effects of foot binding, that literally limited the mobility of millions of women, must have been substantial.” [Vri2 27]
7. • A few articles on the well-known Chinese cruelty to animals:
“Boiled Alive Cat” Prepared, Served In Guangzhou Restaurants
• www.chinasmack.com/2010/pictures/boiled-alive-cat-prepared-served-in-guangzhou-restaurants.html
End the cruelty: Join our campaign to end sick Chinese festival where they skin and boil dogs ALIVE for food
• www.thesun.co.uk/archives/news/1205737/end-the-cruelty-join-our-campaign-to-end-sick-chinese-festival-where-they-skin-and-boil-dogs-alive-for-food/
Inside the Disturbing World of Bear-Bile Farming
• news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/05/160505-asiatic-bear-bile-trade-laos/
Dog and cat fur and leather trade – a horror beyond belief
• www.galgoamigo.com/dog-and-cat-fur-and-leather-trade.html
Horrific animal cruelty that shames China: Wild mob kill dogs just for WALKING into a city
• www.express.co.uk/news/world/441130/Animal-cruelty-in-China-exposed-as-dogs-killed-in-street-by-laughing-mob-including-police
• The Chinese are responsible for most of the world’s demand of endangered animal parts, putting these precious animals in severe danger of extinction. China’s recent proclamations of ‘official bans’ on imports such as ivory are worthless, especially as over 90% of the trade is ‘underground’. Articles:
Traditional Chinese Medical Authorities Are Unable to Stop the Booming Trade in Rare Animal Parts
• time.com/4578166/traditional-chinese-medicine-tcm-conservation-animals-tiger-pangolin/
From tiger paws to bear testicles, the bizarre animal parts on sale in China’s ‘medicine markets’ where the more endangered a species is, the more healing qualities it is believed to have
• www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3021541/From-crocodile-jaws-bear-testicles-bizarre-animal-parts-sale-China-s-medicine-markets-endangered-species-healing-qualities-believed-have.html
China defends use of wild animals in traditional medicine
• www.reuters.com/article/us-china-endangered-idUSKCN0ZI0GB
How China, Asia Fuel Poaching of Endangered Animals
• www.seeker.com/how-china-asia-fuel-poaching-of-endangered-animals-1838662798.html
An alarming map of the global ivory trade that killed 17,000 elephants in one year
• www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/03/15/an-alarming-map-of-the-global-ivory-trade-that-killed-17000-elephants-in-one-year/
China’s Ban On The Ivory Trade Is Simply Not Enough
• www.huffingtonpost.com/rachael-willis-/chinas-ban-on-the-ivory-trade_b_14243416.html
8. • China has a severe shortage of voluntary organ donors. The regime occasionally releases exaggerated (though still very low) figures, but sometimes the truth gets out:
“The voluntary organ donation system doesn’t work in China… They tried it, it failed. According to a 2011 article in Beijing Today, only 37 people in a country of about 1.3 billion volunteered.” Source:
China’s Secret Holocaust Part 1 [0:55-1:10]
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5pojQ12lRI
9. • It is possible that lower sympathy in Chinese is partly due to lower sensitivity to pain; “A Chinese will endure without an anesthetic, showing no signs of acute distress, surgical operations that would require an anesthetic with any Occidental. This quality appears to arise from an actual dullness to pain, rather than from any mental habituation to self-control. In any case, the cutting and sawing that can be done on a Chinese without recourse to ether is astounding… Every foreigner meets experiences that reveal to his amazement, in spite of all he has heard, the incredible stoicism of a Chinese in physical distress that would be likely to unnerve a Westerner. [Recounts several examples in detail.]” [Townsend 33:67-70]
• “The same freedom from the tyranny of nerves is exhibited in the Chinese endurance of physical pain. Those who have any acquaintance with the operations in hospitals in China, know how common, or rather how almost universal, it is for the patients to bear without flinching a degree of pain from which the stoutest of us would shrink in terror. It would be easy to expand this topic alone into an essay…”. [Smith 94:94-6]
————
II-4. Communication is more open and honest among Whites than Chinese.
For Whites, speech is chiefly a means to inform and to exchange ideas; for Chinese, speech is merely a tool of manipulation, usually dishonest [1]. Visitors to China find that getting honest answers to inquiries is an exasperating challenge [2]. Chinese shopkeepers will make any claim to get a sale, and prices are always a matter of ‘negotiation’, i.e. of what pains one is willing to take to avoid getting ripped off [3]. Contracts made by Chinese are often broken [4]. Chinese are far more prolific than Whites at crimes of deception (section II-6.A). Even when caught red-handed, Chinese seldom admit to any wrongdoing, but rather “save face” by making up preposterous excuses [5]. Chinese lies often come with a big smile and declarations of Confucian piety [6]. A Chinese ‘on his game’ is effusively expressive: graciously cordial to elicit goodwill, tragically grief-stricken to elicit sympathy, or ragingly indignant to elicit guilt [7]. They can switch from one of these moods to another on a dime, as circumstances suggest [8]. Some Chinese lies are just an effort to avoid direct denial or refusal, without a real intention to deceive [9].
1. • On this key point, that lying is a matter of course for Chinese, I must cite Townsend and others at length: “Such a system has brought about a degree of skill in deception absolutely unimaginable to a Westerner. Survival depends upon out-deceiving competitors. With the credentials of economic success a matter of deception, those who are at the top may be expected to be better at the game than those lower down. Experience with “high class” Chinese, especially officials, bears out this proposition with sad frequency…
For example, the readiness of all classes of Chinese to say whatever will please your ear at the moment, altogether irrespective of its truth, will be impressively noted in dealing with them. If you want your suit dry cleaned by Friday afternoon, or some such thing, of course you are assured that it will be ready, and you may privately rest assured that it will not be. This trait is rather common among tradespeople all over the world, and particularly to be expected among certain classes of immigrants in America. But in China it is a cult. And on inquiry, you will be told that in the whole history of the Wing Wong dry cleaning concern no suit was ever cleaned in so short a time as you mention, and the hint is that you are highly unreasonable to have expected quicker service. The same experience will characterize dealings with Chinese high and low, from trifles to things of importance. I should say, from personal experience, that the total of procrastination is no greater per diem and per capita in China than in some Latin American countries. But after summarizing a fair number of instances both ways, I sense that the motive is different in China. There is not a cult of manana, exactly, because the Chinese, compared to Latin Americans, are very industrious. It is simply an almost absolute disregard of truth, which prompts them to say what they estimate will be most pleasing to you and, incidentally, what will get rid of you most smoothly if you are unprofitable, or get your order if you are a possible customer. In answering inquiries about time, distance or anything else, a Chinese will say what he thinks you want to hear oblivious to the fact that you may prefer accuracy, even though it is disappointing.
In this particular, you may recall the admonition of a Chinese philosopher of the past, a moral that the Chinese have certainly learned to practice, to the effect that one should never refuse a request in an abrupt manner, but should grant it in form, though with no intention of fulfillment: “Put him off till tomorrow, and then another tomorrow. Thus you comfort his heart,” advised the ancient sage.
This characteristic of the Chinese, their cheerful indifference to truth, exasperates a foreigner perhaps more than any quality in their nature. And as is natural, without any conception of truth as a principle among themselves, they seem frequently incapable of believing anything said to them by others. After a few days of being lied to by Chinese on all sides and at all times, you will wonder at the strange individuality of your experience. For you will have heard all your life, if you are an average American, that a Chinaman’s word is as good as his bond. Accordingly, you broach the problem to a veteran foreign resident:
He agrees that a Chinaman’s word is as good as his bond. But he postscripts this with the salty humor with which the explanation is always sprung: “Of course – but then his bond isn’t worth a damn.”” [Townsend 33:6-8]
; “In the West we scarcely know anything about lying. We are rank amateurs. Of course, the majority of Americans will lie occasionally under the stress of social niceties and a few will not be dependable for the truth at any time. Still, such a record comes nowhere near scratching the real possibilities in the matter. We have a host of recalcitrant die-hards who are every day and everywhere telling the truth. And our recognized scholars have a strong pride of accuracy. The great majority lean to a conservatism of certainty in announcements, distinguishing between opinion and fact. And even in such suspect classes as politicians and advertising men, lying is usually meditated to preserve if possible for the spokesman a share of the universal Western esteem for those within the pale of the truth. Few will lie when the alternative of telling the truth would entail no disadvantage.
Very different traditions prevail in China. When I was first on my way there, I was ordered to check in with the U. S. Immigration authorities at San Francisco, in order to familiarize myself further with problems of Chinese entering the United States, particularly in the matter of illicit entry. A remark of one of the veteran inspectors at Angel Island sounded humorously cynical to me then, though he made it with reflective seriousness: “One time with another,” he said, “a Chinese would rather lie than tell the truth.” Within a few weeks I had to admit that I agreed with him. The conclusion is inevitable. The hourly evidence piled up in dealing with your servants, with tradespeople, with the so-called “high class” Chinese, with the rank and file of Chinese Government employees from generals to coolies, is too preponderant. With absolutely no advantage to be gained by lying, in a thousand instances where the explanation is of no importance one way or the other, a Chinese will relate the most absurd sort of cellophane lie. High and low, coolie or general, they will lie naively, reassuringly, always affecting surprised pain at your doubts, when within an hour or so the truth is certain to crop out.
Significantly, there is no word in Chinese with the exact odium and indignant contempt carried by the good hard English lie, the rasping German die Lugen, or the nasal but highly informative French monsonge. Necessity was not the mother of invention in this matter among the Chinese. To adopt the nearest Chinese equivalent, and advise a Celestial that he is telling “falsehoods,” carries but little opprobrium and no insult.” [88-9]
; “To relieve the issue of the instant with words is an unfailing Chinese reaction. It does not matter that the speaker will be caught up on points of accuracy a little later. Such a development will not usually embarrass him, nor is it expected to be the occasion of a reopening of the matter by you. It is almost a mental reflex, about as nearly automatic as anything not actually a physiological function could be. And the Chinese are supremely competent in employing without hesitation words which will in some faint degree fit the occasion and supply some sort of intended deception.” [92]
; “That this trait has been deep in Chinese nature since the earliest times is evident in all the records preserved of their remotely ancient history…” [95]
; More on the amazing dishonesty of Chinese in [Townsend 33:6-8,88-100].
• “Seated behind me [in a bus in Sichuan, China] was a European couple and in no time the man was arguing with the intendant because the bus wasn’t going where he had been told it was. “You lied to me!” he shouted. “You Chinese people…. You’re all the same! You’re all a bunch of f^cking liars!” After we alighted, he and his wife began petitioning me with their greivances. They had experienced nothing but dishonesty since the moment they arrived in China, they said. That was three weeks ago. Didn’t the Chinese realize what a bad impression they were making? Were they so pathetic that they would lie over a 20-yuan bus ticket? Wasn’t this country supposed to be modernizing and opening up?” [Parfitt 12:118]
; “As a rule of thumb in the Chinese universe, the more something is said, the more you can assume it to be untrue.” [181]
; “[Bo Yang] asserts that the Chinese are afraid of telling the truth, incapable of introspection or admitting error, and “addicted to bragging, lying (considered a virtue), equivocating and slander.” [223]; “[Yang] writes, “America is full of psychiatrists, but you will have a hard time finding one in China. The reason for this is, when you see a (shrink), you’re supposed to tell the truth. Chinese people never tell the truth. If they’ve got a pain in their buttocks, they tell the doctor they’ve got an earache. If a woman doesn’t like a particular man, she’ll tell the psychiatrist the man doesn’t like her. How can the doctor do a proper job if his patients always tell lies?” [224]
; “This was yet another recurring theme I had noticed while living in Chinese society. Rather than simply lie, why not tell the exact opposite of what was true? What better way to cast doubt on whomever it was you wished to discredit? It was effectively perverse, but perversely effective.” [287]
; “How was a [Chinese] culture predicated on coercion and disinformation, and preoccupied, as it was, with revenge, deceit, and distrust ever going to enter into a sincere relationship with the world community?” [299]
• No author on this, but still interesting: “People in China lie all the time about this and that. Teenagers lie about their age to get jobs. Workers lie when they are negotiating so they can a better job.”
• factsanddetails.com/china/cat4/sub18/item116.html
2. • See section II-1 and its sources on Chinese being reluctant to talk to strangers.
• “It brings me no joy to report this, but this is the way it is: it can seem that every single time you ask for information or the availability of some product or service in China you are supplied with an automatic negative response: ‘No,’ ‘I don’t know,’ ‘I’m not sure,’ ‘We don’t have that,’ ‘We can’t do that,’ ‘You can’t do that,’ ‘It can’t be helped,’ ‘It’s out of our hands,’ ‘That’s impossible,’ ‘You can’t get there from here.’… The upshot, then, is that you are left to play Twenty Questions in order to find out where the nearest toilet is.” [Parfitt 12:196]
3. • Discussion and several examples of this are given by Townsend and Troy Parfitt in [Townsend 33:5,19-22,49,90-1] and [Parfitt 12:88,102,137-42,148]:
• “If you take pity on a ricksha coolie – and he will do his talented best to look pitiful – and pay him too much, he will shout that he is cheated. If he thinks you do not understand any Shanghai dialect, he will curse you roundly at the top of his voice for the benefit of other grinning coolies looking on. He supposes that because you gave him more than you were obliged to, you are therefore a fool, and with a little exhibit of shouts and tears you can be made a bigger fool and induced to hand over a good deal more. Nothing corresponding to sympathy exists in the world he knows, and the idea of some one desiring to set him up with a square meal after seeing him barefoot in the snow and slush is completely incomprehensible. Experimentally, I have more than once handed a coolie a dollar for a brief and easy trip, to see what he would do. In only one instance did the coolie handed a dollar, about two days’ earnings, fail to turn on me with a grand show of fury and indignation at being underpaid.
Missionaries will try to tell you that away from the big cities, out among the noble-spirited “real Chinese” in the rural areas, such a present would bring immediate thanks and amiable smiles. But experimenting similarly elsewhere, in smaller cities, villages and even out on the farms away from any possible tourist, hundreds of miles from Shanghai, I have found the same results uniformly in every locality visited.
Once returning from a mountain walk late in the afternoon I missed the proper path back across the valley of rice paddies. The paths, made of stones used as field boundaries, ran in every direction. It was impossible to see the paths ahead because of the dense growing rice, and I called an idling farm boy to ask the correct way. He walked a little distance to show me. I thanked him and fished out a silver dollar, as much as he could earn with exceptionally good luck in an ordinary week. He took the dollar, pocketed it, and announced that the standard price for path-showing thereabouts was two dollars. He raised a loud commotion, shifting, as is usual with Chinese, to supplications and wails when Act I of the accustomed drama failed of effect, and followed behind me moaning for two miles, absurdly hoping the foreign devil would change his mind.” [Townsend 33:19-20]
; “Where a foreigner is at some disadvantage, ricksha or sampan coolies will at times cause considerable annoyance. Even in Shanghai, if no foreign police protection is in sight, ricksha coolies already well paid will at times carry their insults to the point of throwing stones, or trying to hold back another ricksha coolie with whom the tourist may wish to ride away. In some cities, particularly Swatow, where steamers commonly anchor out in the stream instead of docking, the sampan coolies who have agreed to take a passenger to his ship at a certain price will endeavor to get him well out in the water distant from either the ship or the shore and hold him up for an exorbitant sum.” [49]
; “When shopping in China, if you are a stranger, every recourse will be exhausted in practically every shop to short-change you. If the count is short, the shop-keeper’s defense will be that the exchange of small money for large has changed that day. Upon your willingness to call on the exchange shop next door and prove him wrong, the shop-keeper hands over a little more money. Upon further argument, he will hand over a further installment in the cause of accuracy. At the last he will complain that he has no more ten-cent pieces or no more coppers. Upon your pressing him with a willingness to change a larger piece, he will comply as if that were what he had been hoping for all along, and as readily as not brazenly open up a till which displays a peck of small change, without batting an eye, and all smiles and courtesy, amiably pay over the shortage and urge you to call again, escorting you to the door with a bow.
It is Anglo-Saxon nature to be irritated at this. But that is the system in China, quite as natural to them as assuring you that the cloth won’t fade and that the vase is a genuine Ming, though the cloth is of two colors where a part of it has already struck the light and the vase is stamped plainly with the trademark of a concern never organized until 1925. All words in China are meaningless, and costing nothing, they are dispensed with profligate abundance everywhere on all occasions. Chinese dearly love jabber, protracted harangues over trifles and endlessly gushing eulogies and contentions which upon their face are ridiculously untrue. Foreigners, with a reverence for conciseness and accuracy, especially Americans and British, are of course decidedly out of their element in all this. They feel the fatigue of the constant resistance to this unrelaxing combat in every negotiation, large or trifling; and with this fatigue there accumulates a rising exasperation at its needlessness, and a deep chronic inward contempt for the Chinese because of it.
But you soon find that where the Chinese have a genuine talent for exasperating you, they have a double talent for placating you when you exhibit anger. No race approaches them in a talent for what we call handing out soft soap. If you have gone out of a particular shop indignant at the proprietor, lo, the next day he will likely be lying in wait with a present, a trifle that he begs you to accept as a token of old friendship. No reference will be made to his former atrocities. And he will succeed in being so plaintive, so movingly pathetic in his passion for your continued kind regard, and so skillfully histrionic in the compliments he bestows, that three to one you will accept the package of tea, or whatever it is, thank him, and silently cursing yourself for your gullibility, mumble that you will be in to see him later about that what-not he wants to sell, and which he would not sell to anyone else at twice the price.” [21-2]
; “Usually the introduction to it is in the shops, upon first arrival. This is the innocuous, Oriental bargaining variety, and is expected by any wellinformed traveler. It is not so much lying in the moral turpitude sense as mere play-acting, the mutually understood little exhibition of sales dramatics, almost a part of the etiquette of any commercial transaction. Wang Lee swears that he tells the truth and that he has always been known to do so, that you can summon the foremost personages of the city to attest his scrupulous truthfulness, and that the price is positively ten dollars with never until doomsday a single penny of discount possible. You edge toward the door a little and he leaps in front of you, redoubling his protests that he is known up and down the street as a strictly one price dealer – but that you can have the article for nine seventy-five this once. The business goes on for some minutes, until finally you have the article wrapped up and hand over what you both expected at the outset-three dollars and a half. Yet if you show interest in another article the entire show will be repeated, and would be repeated were you to go in the same shop every day for a week. It is the custom, and only a few of the somewhat Westernized dealers of the cities have adjusted themselves to a more time-saving dispatch of matters. The majority of native dealers dislike the brusque take-it-or-leave-it attitude of Americans, and will even refuse a sum slightly in excess of what they expected to receive if it means foregoing their favorite theatrical workout.” [90-1]
• “While inspecting some ancient street lanes, I was accosted by a girl who worked in the latter. Addressing me in broken English, she invited me to tea. “I don’t want money,” she insisted. “I just want let you understand Bai people hospitality.” I accepted, and we began to speak in Mandarin. Past racks of drying fish, she led me up a rocky pathway…
“You seem different from most foreigners,” she said. “You speak Chinese and you were willing to talk to me. Most Westerners just ignore me.”
“Well, I suppose they think you only want their money,” I replied.
“Oh, but when a Bai invites you to tea, it is only to drink tea. Hospitality is part of our culture.”
When we got to her home, we went in a room with a sofa and a coffee table. She went off to put the kettle on.
When I give you this cup, you have to say, ‘La wei nei,'” she instructed courteously. “It means ‘Thank you’ in the Bai dialect…”
I had a few sips, and she went off to prepare another cup…
“This one is called xingfu cha (‘happiness tea’) because it’s got walnuts and brown sugar and it can make you happy,” she explained with a laugh…
“La wei nei,” I attempted.
“Good!” she exclaimed. “You have very good pronunciation.” Then, she scurried away to make the third cup.
“This last one is sandao cha (‘third course tea’). It was the favorite drink of the emperor thirteen hundred years ago…”
“Which one do you like best?” she asked.
“The xingfu cha,” I replied. “It is sweet and it tastes good.”
“Yes, it is good,” she agreed. “And it can bring you happiness and wealth. And it’s only fifteen yuan. I have change if you do not have any small bills.” [Parfitt 12:88]
; “Hotels in China almost always ask for a deposit. The unfinished hotel located on Zhongdian’s anonoymous main street asked for 100 yuan (or 12$). They refused to return it because I had taken a map from the room. When I had checked in, they had suggested that I do so, so as to avoid getting lost. When I reminded them of this, they insisted that they had made it clear that if I used the map, I’d have to pay for it. Of course, they never said any such thing, and of course we got into a bit of a row, which I ended up winning. “Perhaps I should knock on everyone’s door and ask if they are aware the maps are worth 100 yuan,” I said calmly… A receptionist retrieved my money from a drawer and threw it at me.” [102]
; “At the travel agency, the man who had sold me my ticket solemnly informed me that there was a problem.
“You see, when I took the US dollars you had paid me in to the bank yesterday… well, they told me that it wasn’t enough. They said you had made a mistake.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. The exchange rate is 7.19 RMB to the US dollar, not 7.91, so that’s a difference of 24 dollars.”
“So, I guess you owe me 24 dollars,” I deadpanned.
“No, you owe me 24 dollars,” the fellow replied.
“But the exchange rate is 7.91,” I said. “You told me so yourself. The banks are closed now, so we can’t ask them… I know. Maybe we can ask the police. Perhaps they can tell us what the true exchange rate is. Is it okay if I use your phone to do that?”
He didn’t miss a beat. “Oh wait,” he said, punching some numbers into his calculator… “I miscalculated. You only owe me $1.00.”
I sat there staring at him.
“Okay, forget it,” he said, waving his hand. “How ’bout I arrange a hotel for you in Yichtang?…” [137-8]
4. This well-known fact is usually admitted to only with rationalizations, such as:
• “Contracts: To the Western mind, once a bargain is struck, it shouldn’t be modified; a deal is a deal. For Easterners, agreements are often regarded as tentatively agreed-upon guides for the future.” [Nisbett 03:196-7] and:
• “Westerners are advised to…realize that true authority for decision making may lie outside the negotiating chamber, so that deals struck now may be subject to change later.” [Bond 91:87]
• “Business of that kind [Chinese government promises for restitution], day after day, every case, however trivial, strung out over months and years of endless, aimless lying, with each lie merely a pretext for another, with all the while the consular officer impatient in the American way to render all the assistance possible to his nationals, has been responsible for a large number of American consuls quitting the China service in disgust.” [Townsend 33:98-100]
; “Even in Shanghai, if no foreign police protection is in sight, ricksha coolies already well paid will at times carry their insults to the point of throwing stones, or trying to hold back another ricksha coolie with whom the tourist may wish to ride away. In some cities, particularly Swatow, where steamers commonly anchor out in the stream instead of docking, the sampan coolies who have agreed to take a passenger to his ship at a certain price will endeavor to get him well out in the water distant from either the ship or the shore and hold him up for an exorbitant sum.” [49]
5. • “It is often said that in China you must never get angry with anyone or cause them to lose face, but if you are being give the short end of the stick, that is precisely what you must do… There is nothing more childish, and to that end, more telling about Chinese culture than the concept of face; it is merely a license for people to behave however they please. Mind you, I didn’t feel singled out when people tried to con me. I knew that Chinese people had been conning each other since time out of mind.” [Parfitt 12:103]
; “Our driver rear-ended another vehicle, and, though it had been his fault, got out to excoriate the other driver. In Chinese society an elaborate system is in place to ensure that wrongdoers are never in the wrong. It involves lying, denial, shifting the blame, recrimination, and intimidation.” [154]
• “To be accused of a fault is to “lose face,” and the fact must be denied, no matter what the evidence, in order to save face…[examples]”. [Smith 94:18]
• Bo Yang was an honest Chinese man: “Chinese people can be extremely convincing when they talk, thanks to their remarkably nimble tongues. If you believe what they say, there is nothing they cannot do, including extinguishing the sun with a single breath of air, and ruling the world with a single flick of the hand…
The tendency towards internecine struggle has spawned another insidious phenomenon: an utter reluctance to admit mistakes. How many of you have ever heard a Chinese admit that he or she has made an error? If you have, then break out the Maotai: it is time to start celebrating the renaissance of China!…
Chinese people are highly reluctant to admit their errors, and can produce a myriad of reasons to cover their mistakes…” [Yang 84]
• “Generally speaking, the Chinese “behave properly” generally to avoid shame and they fear losing face—not necessarily because they might feel badly about their actions. For many, anything goes… as long as you don’t get caught!…
Similarly, the Chinese concept of the “truth” is not black or white either. The emphasis is less on always telling the objective “truth,” and more about what the situation and relationship calls for. This difference helps explain the cultural differences on lying. The Chinese will go through great lengths to protect face… In fact, it’s perfectly acceptable to tell a lie—even a bald-faced one—if it serves to protect face. China’s culture of shame doesn’t think of lies in terms of “right” and “wrong.” Instead, the goal of Chinese truth is often to protect the face of an individual, group, or even nation… For instance, a hotel receptionist might tell you an obvious lie when he tells you that they don’t have any vacancies. This might be their face-saving way to avoid having to tell you that their hotel doesn’t allow foreigners.”
• www.china-mike.com/chinese-culture/understanding-chinese-mind/cult-of-face/
6. • “To show esteem for the law, it was best for every [Chinese] man with ideas of getting along well to go about with lofty principles constantly on his tongue. This system of profuse moral proverbs was a sort of banner betokening a person’s affiliation with the forces of righteousness. It was wielded in every transaction of life, to show that a man so steeped in its principles could not possibly be a violator. With everybody practicing this expedient nobody was deceived. The vocabulary of righteousness was likewise esteemed because it belonged to the sages of the past, and was therefore sacred – in theory.
Passionate rectitude was asserted in every negotiation, with nobody accepting the words for literal truth. The loftiest declarations of honor, everywhere used and nowhere meant, became as much taken for granted as the “dear” in the salutation of our most impersonal of letters. Thus in time the language was debauched until no words were left which were not a mere ritual instead of an expression of conviction. This is a condition impressively apparent in other parts of Asia, where every shopkeeper and peddler opens with “May I perish if I speak falsehood,” or some similar conventionality, the while aiming at the most ridiculously transparent fraud. But from the experience of foreigners who have lived in various Oriental countries, we may infer that the Chinese have outdone all others in this corruption of the entire vocabulary of honor and integrity to an unmeant ritual. Among them a vast etiquette of lying long ago supplanted all literal implications.” [Towsend 33:123-4]; See also [157-8,229-30,242].
; “And to gather his wits, while cornered and pondering a new [lie], your noble host may be relied upon to launch into proverbs, with which the tongue and head of every Chinese are at all times hopelessly infested.” [95]
• “It is unnecessary to do more than to allude in passing to the fact that the Chinese government, so far as it is knowable, appears to be a gigantic example of the trait which we are discussing [insincerity]. Instances are to be found in the entire history of foreign relations with China, and one might almost say in all that is known of the relations of Chinese officials to the people. A single but compendious illustration is to be found in those virtuous proclamations which are issued with such unfailing regularity, in such superlative abundance, with such felicity of diction, on all varieties of subjects and from all grades of officials. One thing only is lacking, namely, reality, for these fine commands are not intended to be enforced. This is quite understood by all concerned, and on this point there are no illusions. “The life and state papers of a Chinese statesman, like the Confessions of Rousseau, abound in the finest sentiments and the foulest deeds. He cuts off ten thousand heads, and cites a passage from Mencius about the sanctity of human life. He pockets the money given him to repair an embankment and thus inundates a province, and he deplores the land lost to the cultivator of the soil. He makes a treaty which he secretly declares to be only a deception for the moment, and he declaims against the crime of perjury.” Doubtless there may be pure-minded and upright officials in China, but it is very hard to find them…” [Smith 94:283-4]
7. • “No race approaches them in a talent for what we call handing out soft soap. If you have gone out of a particular shop indignant at the proprietor, lo, the next day he will likely be lying in wait with a present, a trifle that he begs you to accept as a token of old friendship. No reference will be made to his former atrocities. And he will succeed in being so plaintive, so movingly pathetic in his passion for your continued kind regard, and so skillfully histrionic in the compliments he bestows, that three to one you will accept the package of tea, or whatever it is, thank him, and silently cursing yourself for your gullibility, mumble that you will be in to see him later about that what-not he wants to sell, and which he would not sell to anyone else at twice the price…
And it is true, a point to be elaborated later, that large numbers of Americans do find the Chinese likable; for their unsurpassed amiability, gracious etiquette, spontaneous lying for the expediency of the moment, and other talented diminutions of face-to-face difficulties, all act as soothing lubrication in matters where we should risk friction for honesty.” [Towsend 33:22]
; “[T]he Chinese are talented in assuming just the right tone of injured humility combined with an air of surprised disappointment that stirs in average Americans a hang-dog feeling of guilt in not having met just expectations. This wheedling act is manifest in every peddler and coolie in China, and veteran foreigners after lifelong experience with its underlying mercenary motive of cool calculation simply clutch their wallets and laugh it off.” [192]
; “Peculiarly, a Chinese is about the most difficult thing alive against which to maintain a consistent anger. You may know that a particular individual is a thorough rascal; he will disgust you with his supplications at one time, at another he will infuriate you through and through with his insolence. But – he is the most talented being in creation in soothing wrath that has become too hot for comfort…
Proper appreciation of this Chinese ability in gaining sympathy is essential to intelligent diplomatic dealings with them. Yet it is nearly impossible for people without residence in China to appreciate the extent to which tears, plaints, and all sorts of sympathy-winning actions can be simulated by Chinese in the most cold-blooded spirit of gaining an end. For every Chinese, from highest to lowest, all the acts of life are concentrated upon extracting, from those who mean nothing to him, what he can for the benefit of himself and his clan.
Just as all creatures wage the battle of life with the best weapons given them by nature, the Chinese wage theirs with their foremost weapon – acting… [Their chief skill is] their remarkable ability to detect the emotional susceptibilities of opponents, and to attack these with the display best calculated to achieve the desired results. The display may be designed to induce sympathy, to mollify anger, to inspire generosity, or to flatter conceit. But the Chinese are adept at deciding what method is best, and before this talent many a sturdy diplomat has given way against the accusations of his rational self in the manner that Samson melted in the arms of the cooing Delilah.
It is as natural for a Chinese to employ the words, looks, and gestures that will win his point – usually sympathy – from another in an emergency as it is for a ‘possum to feign death. Against such inherent talents, of affected emotion, perfected by practice in almost every act of a Chinese’s life from infancy on, our American traditions provide no adequate defense. If they tamed Genghis Kahn, the toughest opponent mankind has seen since the dawn of history, the simple-hearted average American obviously has a poor chance.” [313-5]
; “We met now and then, at Chinese feasts or foreign official receptions, the contact men of the local Chinese official roster, and on such occasions the conversation was necessarily in the plane of high compliments, innumerable gambeis, and a complete ignoring of all the indignation, irritations and accusations which would resume again the next day. The party and government they represented was antiforeign, but their speeches were of the flowery kind usual in diplomatic intercourse, further elaborated by traditions of Chinese etiquette. Foreign responses were in the same key, lauding the greatness of China, and referring to long-standing international friendships. Nobody believed anybody else – less still did anybody believe himself…” [241]
• “[A]s a race, the Chinese have a strongly dramatic instinct. The theatre may almost be said to be the only national amusement, and the Chinese have for theatricals a passion like that of the English-man for athletics, or the Spaniard for bull-fights. Upon very slight provocation, any Chinese regards himself in the light of an actor in a drama. He throws himself into theatrical attitudes, performs the salaam, falls upon his knees, prostrates himself and strikes his head upon the earth, under circumstances which to an Occidental seem to make such actions superfluous, not to say ridiculous.” [Smith 94:16]
8. • “It should be remembered that a Chinese is eternally a dramatist, a play actor in the midst of the most poignant realities about him. And where he is able to work his own mind off the actualities of an issue by the role he assumes, he counts upon removing your own focus from them vastly more. The speed with which the most bedraggled, cringing, smiling and piteous beggarly ricksha boy can change gears and become a shouting and cursing and spitting Oriental demon is eye-opening. Even round-the-world tourists, in Shanghai for a day, if they go about much alone, make this astonishing discovery soon enough.
I have seen Chinese deck passengers, by their convenient talent for selfinduced momentary grief, elicit immense sympathy among uninitiated foreign bystanders. Complaining that they have no money for fare – after already coming aboard – they scream, moan, and thresh about in a grand epileptic scene, gurgling meanwhile about sick parents or one of the usual expedients in such cases. The tears, in profusion, were unmistakably real. But grabbed by a strong-arm bos’un squad, and facing a certainty of being thrown off the boat, they could produce the money readily enough, then settle themselves among their poles and baskets and begin chatting amiably away as if nothing had ever happened.
According to our standards, it is a melancholy truth that nearly every single word and gesture in China having the outward semblance of squareness, sincerity, loyalty and truth is a hollow rite…” [Townsend 33:101-2]
; “No shame equals that of inability to bury a relative with ostentatious extravagance, and funerals, of which there is no end in Chinese streets, are impressively lavish considering the means of the people. It often happens that a family pawns everything and is ruined financially by zealously putting every copper into a funeral. The wailing of the mourners in sackcloth rends the air as they go along. On a hot day, however, the bearers of the mammoth painted wooden coffins will sit down to rest occasionally. Then the members of the cortege, all except the ones hidden within the draperies of the sedan chairs, may be seen falling at once into amiable animated chatter during the time-out interlude. Mourning recommences when the march is resumed.
Bishop John Hind of Foochow told me of an experience he had one morning while taking a walk along a path that led by a Chinese cemetery. Lying on a grave as he approached there was a Chinese woman, evidently a widow, moaning and weeping and rolling about by the grave giving way to intense spasms of emotion, with all indications of a heart torn by a grief nearly unendurable for some loved one who had departed. But as he drew close and was about to pass on, the woman suddenly leaped lightly to her feet, brushed away the dust and tears, and asked very cheerfully what time it was. The Bishop told her. At that she dusted herself further, picked up her things and started away, remarking that, as she had no clock, she had already wept some minutes more than the rites required of her for that day.
Once when I was walking in a rural area with a guest who was but recently arrived in the country, we met a long funeral procession coming toward us. By the time we came up to it, the procession was taking a momentary rest from the stiff climb up a long hill. The mourners were taking one of their occasional intermissions from wailing, and the musicians, who had been playing the usual plaintive melancholies of Chinese funeral music, were likewise taking a little time out to enjoy themselves. My guest had never heard any native. Chinese music, and was anxious to hear some of the lively tunes, the equivalent of American jazz, that I had mentioned as being rather good. Sure enough, when I handed the orchestra leader a little money he struck up several very lively pieces for us. The nearer mourners caught the frolicsome spirit of the light-footed notes and gathered around to laugh and joke in great glee. After a little we started on, the musicians took their places in line again and resumed their doleful pipings, the coolies carrying the coffin reshouldered their poles, the mourners fell into line and recommenced their heart-rending grief.” [73-4]
9. • “We think of lying as a recourse, a somewhat venturesome and usually reluctant expedient intended to maintain a deception until the crisis of a difficulty is past. The Chinese idea of lying is first of all that it is an answer – a response of some sort, opposed to the bothersome or disagreeable actualities of the moment-designed to protract uncertainty in another person, or at least get rid of him. It may not even be expected to do this, but will be designed merely to parry the approach of the disagreeable. Chinese lies of this latter variety are often so ludicrously transparent that they could deceive no one for a single instant. They may be the first ill-considered absurdity that comes into the liar’s head. But, eternally fond of words, he will stick tenaciously to one lie until it is hopelessly blasted, then without change of countenance ignore it altogether and switch to another equally preposterous, contradicting the first.” [Towsend 33:94-5]
————
II-5. Whites have greater moral drive than Chinese, in general.
A. Whites have greater moral drive, based on greater trust and empathy and lower outgroup discrimination.
While the wisdom of any particular morally-motivated course of action is open to doubt, Whites typically have greater moral drive than Chinese. In Whites’ challenging but less densely-populated and less resource-scarce evolutionary environment, behaving altruistically to assist nonfamilial neighbors and engender goodwill had greater rewards and less risk than did such conduct in China’s environment (section I).
Whites have a more trusting attitude toward strangers (section I-1-2), and more faith that others have a similar positive attitude as themselves and so will reciprocate acts of kindness. Whites have more sympathy for others’ suffering (section I-3), greater perceived prospect of winning others’ love, and more concern for their community and nation (and even—foolishly—for nonwhites) [1]. Chinese, on the other hand, have less regard for those outside their ingroup and expect direct reciprocity for any gifts given or services rendered [2]. Chinese have double standards of morality: one standard for family/ingroup and a lower standard for others [3]. Being inconsiderate to a stranger does not hurt a Chinese’s standing with his ingroup [4]; but a White who is callous to a stranger will likely receive the censure of family and friends, since they make but minimal distinction between ingroup and outgroup. Chinese society is very fractious, with minimal cooperation beyond that enforced by authority [5]. Chinese have extreme contempt for foreigners, notwithstanding their affected grace and courtesies [6].
1. • This is evident, for one thing, in the massive number and size of (international) charity organizations in White nations, and the amount of foreign aid they give. Proving higher levels of charitable giving empirically can hardly be done because of the many complicating factors, such as differing wealth/poverty of countries and differing levels of taxation (and charitable deduction policies) and welfare spending by governments. Survey ‘data’ is almost worthless due to differing honesty levels. But proof is hardly necessary given how obsessed Whites are with taking care of the world, and the lack of such sentiment in others.
• “Another part of China’s heritage from her past, which lies behind modern authoritarianism, was the peculiarly passive attitude of the common people toward government, the apparent irresponsibility of the individual citizen toward affairs of state. Sun Yat-sen complained that his people were like ‘a heap of loose sand’.” [Fairbank 76:123]
• “A related societal downside to this Us versus Them mindset is that feelings of social and civic responsibility are somewhat lacking in Chinese culture. Many expats and longer-term residents complain that the Chinese have a “Not in my backyard” view of the world. The general attitude is “It doesn’t affect me or my family so why should I care?””
• www.china-mike.com/chinese-culture/understanding-chinese-mind/in-out-groups/
• “Of course, the average Chinese is not bothered by abstract ideas about doing anything for the country at large, or in fact with ideas about doing anything for anybody but himself and his immediate family. As a personal philosophy – setting aside the outrageous tyranny usually accompanying it in China – perhaps it is intelligent. But collectively, as it operates in the country as a whole, its destructive consequences are too obvious to require mention. The Westerner’s most often and most justly criticized trait – that of pursuing restlessly and recklessly abstract conceptions of improvement – gives him an immeasurable advantage in world affairs and even in his home affairs over the Chinese. To live, or if necessary to die, for an idea the success of which might enable others to benefit, expresses the height of the ludicrous to ordinary Chinese mentality. Yet this unaccountable oddity in our nature, this youth-spirit of inheritance, so often a terrific penalty upon the individual, has placed our race where it is in the world today. The lack of it has placed the Chinese where they are in the world today, and will probably keep them there.” [Townsend 33:208-9]
• Whites’ greater concern for their community and nation is evident in their greater patriotism. When White nations are attacked, the whole nation comes together to organize in defense. When China is attacked, its every warlord for himself. See the next section and its sources.
2. • “[A]t a Chinese wedding there is always a bookkeeper at the door to take presents. He enters in a book the amount of the guest’s present, if it is cash, or an exact itemization and appraisal of it if it is in goods. A “spotter,” something like those employed in certain American quick lunch restaurants, roams nearby to make note of anybody who squeezes in without giving anything, in case the throng is too great for the bookkeeper to do the spotting. This system is intended to measure the exact degree of obligation incurred by the family toward all comers. Should one of the guests later have a wedding in his own house, he will get a present of exactly the same value as he gave, not a penny more. To an American it sounds jarring to hear “Five dollars” or “Ten dollars” called aloud as his envelope of red tissue paper is torn open and the amount swiftly counted as he passes inside…” [Townsend 33:316]
• “In general, offers of presents [by Chinese] are to be suspected, especially those which are in any particular extraordinary… There is always something behind such an offer, and, as the homely Chinese proverb says of a rat dragging a shovel, the “larger end is the one that is behind,” or, in other words, what is (virtually) required in
return is much greater than what is given. Of the hollowness of these offers many foreigners in China have had experience… [Example]
It is not foreigners only who are beset in this way. Rich Chinese who have had the misfortune to be made happy, are sometimes visited by their neighbours with congratulatory gifts of a trifling character, such as toys for a new-bom heir, presents the total value of which is practically nothing, but which must be acknowledged by a feast — the invariable and always appropriate Chinese response. It is on occasions like this that the most inexpert in Chinese affairs learns to appreciate the accuracy of the Chinese aphorism, which observes, “When one is eating one’s own, he eats till the tears come; but when he is eating the food of others, he eats till the perspiration flows.” It frequently happens under such conditions that the host is obliged to assume the most cordial appearance of welcome, when he is inwardly fuming with rage.” [Smith 94:276-7]
• Among Chinese, it’s improper to even receive help or make a request without acknowledging one’s obligation to somehow repay it in the future: “In the process of acquiring such face, these powerful people will have indebted themselves to various associates who have helped them, such as teachers, former bosses, confidants, and so forth. The norm of reciprocity (bao) requires that they honor these social debts should they ever be called on to do so. Failure in this regard results in the loss of lian, also translated as ‘face’, but referring here to one’s moral integrity as a civilized person. This process is fair, but in the Chinese culture the quid pro quo is extended across greater periods of time than in other cultures and can be repaid indirectly to a third party.” [Bond 91:59]
; “If all decisions were made on the basis of one’s already acquired face, then no one could ‘pull’ on connections beyond his own status. There would simply be no pay-off for the person with more face to grant the request of someone with less. In such a case the petitioner can request that the allocator show favour (ren qing). Such a request implicitly acknowledges that the petitioner lacks the present face legitimately to claim a quid pro quo exchange. Instead of appealing to the allocator’s social bank balance, the appeal is to his compassion, vanity, or sense of responsibility. In exchange for this undeserved favour, the recipient will show his gratitude in a variety of ways—dedicated service and unswerving loyalty, ‘padding’ the superior’s face by lavishly praising his benefactor and undermining his detractors, and so forth. If there are no such opportunities to repay through such acts of respect, there is no cause for worry, because memory persists and our circles of association may intersect in the future, even if that future is a generation away.” [Bond 91:60]
• “Because relationships are nurtured through reciprocating favors, this means that guanxi also encompasses your personal obligations or “social debts”. In other words, it’s not just who you know. It’s also how others in your network see their obligations to you. Every Chinese person maintains a kind of ongoing mental abacus that remembers all of the favors that they’ve provided…as well as all of the debts that they’ve accumulated.
Traditionally, these relationships generally considered lifelong. You could lose touch with someone for years—even decades—after gaining your initial favor and that person can still call in a reciprocal favor out of the blue.
—-
Foreign ex-pats and business people shouldn’t take this guanxi thing too lightly. The main point is to remember that when someone is doing you a favor, they’re not necessarily just “being nice”. There may be an implicit agreement that you’ll someday scratch their back.
So understand what you’re getting yourself into before you get locked into a never-ending cycle of giving and returning favors. It’s important to realize the full implications of accepting a favor, especially a big one. Your Chinese friend may assume that your country operates on a similar guanxi system; they might assume that you have some pull back home to hook them up in the future.
…Be wary about building up bank of obligations. Perhaps a good motto for long-term residents in China to live by is “There’s no such thing as a free lunch”.”
• www.china-mike.com/chinese-culture/understanding-chinese-mind/guanxi/
3. • The greater Chinese reluctance to be friendly toward strangers (section II-1) and to help strangers in distress (section II-3) evinces a lower regard for outgroup; see these sections and their sources.
• “Daily life throws Chinese into contact with a host of persons with whom they have a transient association which is unlikely to be repeated – taxi drivers, fellow passengers, sales staff, fellow spectators, tourists, waiters, and so on. There is no effective response towards such people, for they are outside one’s established groups. The law of the jungle tends to prevail, with people seeking their own personal advantage, totally ‘indifferent’ to the needs and ‘rights’ of others. A careless pushiness, released by the absence of authority, is the order of the day. What Westerners would call rudeness and callousness are endemic to such encounters and result in some testy exchanges across cultural lines!…
The Chinese response is always based on the natured of a pre-existing, specific relationship. Strangers have no place in this social logic and are not mentioned in any of the Five Cardinal Relations. In this vacuum there are no constraints beyond self-interest to bind people together…Sun Long-ji has written:
We may say that from birth, a Chinese person is enclosed by a network of interpersonal relationships which defines and organizes his existence, which controls his Heart-and-Mind: When a Chinese individual is not under the control of the Heart-and-Mind of others, he will become the most selfish of men and bring chaos both to himself and to those around him.” [Bond 91:56-7]
• “Many writers during the century of Western contact between the 1840s to the 1940s deplored the selfish opportunism, competitive jealousy, and disregard for others which they discerned in individual conduct outside the bonds of family, clan, and personal relations. It is a perennially fascinating paradox – this contrast, to the Western way of thinking, between loyalty to family and friends and disregard of the public interest, between the most meticulous sense of responsibility, when responsibility was customarily expected and clearly undertaken, and a callous irresponsibility regarding the suffering of strangers or public evils that concerned no one in particular.
Obviously this less than ideal conduct sprang partly from the fact that the Chinese family outweighed the community both as an object of loyalty and a source of benefits, particularly during a dynastic interregnum when the government itself did not command popular loyalty or at least respect.” [Fairbank 76:123-4]
• “To these limitations on Chinese individualism must be added the factor of the traditional Chinese tendency towards a “closed” society and morality. That is to say, the Chinese always regarded themselves as confined to life around such limited human relations as the family, which provides the most intimate of personal relations. In ethics, for example, moral relations among only certain individuals, such as father and son, sovereign and subject, wife and husband, were considered important, so that the Chinese people tended to pay little attention to any international principles of morality or laws valid for society in all countries (such as the jus gentium).” [Nakamura 64:247-8]
• No author on this, but still interesting: “Chinese tend to be very formal and have an us versus them attitude towards outsiders. Their formality persists until one is allowed on the inside of their group, which is something that usually takes place over time and requires following established protocol and recognizing hierarchies and showing proper respect to achieve.”
• factsanddetails.com/china/cat4/sub18/item116.html
• “One result is that the Chinese—consciously or otherwise—see the world in terms of two groups of people: Their own circle of relationships on one side, and everyone else on the other. In other words, they have a much stronger distinction between “In” versus “Out” groups…
As I described in my Confucius 101 article, Chinese society has always had a strong focus on the family (as well as those in their guanxi network). On the flip side, however, the Chinese tend to be indifferent—suspicious or sometimes hostile even—towards strangers and those outside their network…
One negative consequence of this In-Out group mindset is that many Chinese feel no obligation to treat strangers with the level of respect that Westerners take for granted.”
• www.china-mike.com/chinese-culture/understanding-chinese-mind/in-out-groups/
• “First off, I should explain that the Chinese — consciously or not — use a double standard when applying etiquette rules: They see the world in terms of their circle of personal and business relationships….and everyone else. In other words, it’s as if their rules of etiquette don’t apply when dealing with strangers on the street — replaced by an every-man-for-himself code of conduct.
This helps explains the seeming “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” contradiction that many foreigners have of the Chinese: One minute their exceedingly gracious Chinese host insists on walking them to the bus station…..and the next minute, a pushy stranger has elbowed them out of the way (without even offering a non-verbal “sorry”).”
• www.china-mike.com/china-travel-tips/chinese-etiquette-tips/
• “It is a common proverb that to be poor at home is not to be counted as poverty, but to be poor when on the high-road, away from home, will cost a man his life.
It is in travelling in China that the absence of helpful kindness on the part of the people towards strangers is perhaps most conspicuous… No one will inform [a traveller] that the road which he has taken will presently end in a quagmire. If you choose to drive into a morass, it is no business of the contiguous tax-payers. We have spoken of the neglect of Chinese highways. When the traveller has been plunged into one of the sloughs with which all such roads at certain seasons abound, and finds it impossible to extricate himself, a great crowd of persons will rapidly gather from somewhere, “their hands in their sleeves, and idly gazing,” as the saying goes. It is not until a definite bargain has been made with them that any one of these bystanders, no matter how numerous, will lift a finger to help one in any particular.” [Smi 208]
4. • “You discover in China that among the Chinese friends are regarded as friends on a strictly personal basis. Thus, to Ding Ling, it matters not what sort of a rascal Sing Ming may be to the world at large, provided his treatment of Ding Ling himself is satisfactory, all according to the Book of Rites and so on. Cutting a person’s acquaintance because of what he did to some unknown third party would rarely enter the head of a Chinese.” [Townsend 33:23]
5. • “Traditional China was indeed characterized by a pair of macro-historical opposites: internal and political instability versus institutional and ideological continuity.” [Qian 85:23]
; “[T]he Chinese dynastic cycles show at once political instability and ideological continuity. Hundreds of peasant rebellions, civil wars, nomadic invasions, and dynastic shifts belie a true unification.” [27]
; “During the millennium after the ninth century, the evolutionary pattern of the history of Western Europe contrasts notably with that of traditional China. At the western end of Eurasia there were [long list of intellectual revolutions]. At the eastern end of Eurasia there was an equal number of, if not more, dynastic shifts, rebellions, and invasions.” [31]
; “Viewed from afar, China seemed to lead a stable and ponderous existence. Yet internally it was never quiet and stable. No other nations had so many peasant rebellions, was plagued by so many civil wars, and was invaded so often…” [90]
• “Most abdications in Chinese history, however, were forced, and events in the T’ang Dynasty in particular meant that the title of Retired Emperor ceased to be an honourable one, extravagent displays of filial piety on the part of the new monarch being a facade to cover the fact of usurpation…” [Dawson 78:30]
• “Chinese people are notorious for quarrelling and squabbling among themselves… In the laboratory or examination hall, where no personal relationships are involved, Chinese can produce impressive results. But when three fiery Chinese dragons get together, they can only produce about as much as a single pig, or a single insect, if that much. This is because of their addiction to infighting.
Chinese people squabble among themselves in every situation, since their bodies lack those cells that enable most human beings to get along with each other. When non-Chinese people criticise the Chinese for this weakness, I like to warn them, ‘Chinese people are like this because God knows that with more than one billion of them, if they ever got their act together, the rest of the world wouldn’t be able to handle them. God has been good to you foreigners by making it impossible for the Chinese to cooperate among themselves.’ But it is very painful for me to say this.
Chinese people can easily come up with enough reasons for why they don’t cooperate with each other to fill a book. The best example of this uncohesiveness can be found right here in the United States, where every Chinese community is divided up into as many factions as there are days in the year, each determined to choke the fife out of the rest….
Chinese people simply don’t understand the importance of cooperation. But if you tell a Chinaman he doesn’t understand, he will sit down and write a book just for you entitled The Importance of Co-operation…
Westerners can shake hands after a fight, but Chinese become enemies for life, and will even perpetuate a vendetta for three generations…” [Yang 84]
• “Dr. Chan has recently indicated “an excess of individualism” in China:
“Actually, one of China’s chief troubles in recent decades has been an excess of individualism. Everyone has his own opinion. There have been far too many individualists who think they are above society. Teamwork and cooperative enterprise have been conspicuously lacking. This is the type of thing the communists have set out to destroy. The problem is whether they will destroy the individual himself…”” [Nakamura 64:247-8]
• “[Chinese] loyalties, being narrow, are rather more difficult to meld into an organization-wide affiliation. Usually their ambit is only as wide as the immediate boss’s range of direct relationships. This consequence of paternalism often results in inter-departmental indifference, stone-walling, and competitiveness in Chinese organizations.” [Bond 91:84]
; “Superiors in any organization, be it family, club, or business, are constantly assuming this magistrate’s role with conflicting subordinates who will not confront one another. There is thus what appears to those from an instrumental tradition of talk an inordinate amount of backbiting, gossiping, innuendo, and rumour in Chinese groups.” [54-5]
• “[The Chinese] have most of what it takes, in the modern world, to make things work. They have a talent for obedience, when well supervised. They have industriousness and intelligence. But two other essentials, honesty and willingness to cooperate, they emphatically lack, and some deeply inner ingredient of character seems to militate against remedying this lack. They simply cannot work among themselves in large undertakings…[T]he worst of their deficiencies is their treacherous loyalty. They seem ever prone to work against one another rather than cooperatively, though they are very fond of membership associations expressing a theory of cooperation, but never achieving it.
The frequency with which they betray one another is astounding. To paraphrase a common proverb of American social usage, it may be said that in business one Chinese is a company, two are a clique, and three are a plot…” [Townsend 33:13-4]
; “[T]hose Chinese in strategic positions to exercise this moderate show of authority fall vastly short of the requirements for it. They betray and obstruct one another, maintaining a tug of war, with each pulling a different strand in a different direction, not one willing to give an inch in a common cause, each negotiating with temporarily allied henchmen to stab competitors in the back, each determined on no compromise which does not offer him a lion’s share of the booty.” [194]
; “The Chinese inherently love civic tranquility, and yet historically and at the present time they are among the bloodiest and mass turbulent of nations. Their language is chock full of proverbs about peace and good will, and yet a short walk through any national Chinese street will reveal more family rows, angry bickerings over trifles and more general quarreling than anywhere else in the world… They are the least warlike of nations, yet the constant bloodshed through the centuries in China appalls the historians, and today has probably more soldiers under arms than all the rest of the world combined.” [48]
; “Left to their own devices, as soon as the first signs of relaxed authority appear, they go at one another’s throats like cats and dogs. Searching their history, we find that this was always so. “And then for three centuries anarchy prevailed…” – thus runs a sentence from one of the standard works of history dealing with China, referring to one of the innumerable long sessions of chaos in their past – a past which Chinese writers without the slightest regard for truth allude to as one of beautifully tranquil simplicity. And even in times of governmental authority, Chinese domestic strife seems to us to exceed that of any other race, with suicide the spiteful expedient on a vast scale of wives driven to distraction by the tyranny of husbands against whom they have no recourse at law, and with clans ever squabbling with clans, to all of which traditionally corrupt mandarins rarely offered any solace of justice. Chinese life, civic and domestic, is, in actuality found to have been a thoroughly gory and turbulent affair by any scholar who cares to pore over the mass of journals, court gazettes and chronicles of their past.” [242-3]
• “The madness is still there. To see it, just stand at any intersection and observe. Care to witness a struggle session? Attend a company meeting…[etc. etc.]… There are still violent land seizures in China, only now cadres usually sell what they confiscate to businessmen looking to build hotels and factories. Consequently, there are literally tens of thousands of clashes between peasants and police each year…” [Parfitt 12:169-70]
; “And this is what habitually gets glossed over in the China analysis: Chinese culture remains locked in a self-replicating state of chaos, myopia, inefficiency, intolerance, violence, and irrationality. It is, in a word, backward.” [170]
; “Crucially, [Bo Yang] points out that the Chinese notion of a harmonious society revolves around the quote-unquote harmonious relationship between inferiors and their superiors. Beyond that, harmony does not exist. Like most Chinese virtues, it is something that can only be found in books.” [224]
; “Chinese society has never been a harmonious or peace-loving one. For thousands of years, China has been a land of tribalism, practically uninterrupted warfare, unimaginable tyranny, and indescribable upheaval.” [387]
• Taiwan is largely run by gangsters, and its legislature has big brawls [Parfitt 12:343,372-3]
6. • “The conditions imposed by the Chinese on the Western merchants were less than pleasant. Probably the most ethnocentric people in the world, the Chinese considered their realm the center of the universe, the Middle Kingdom, and regarded all cultural differences as signs of inferiority. All who were not Chinese were, obviously, barbarians.” [Cohen 10:3]
• “In addition to being conservative, Chinese society was zenophobic. It was exceedingly reluctant to adopt foreign technologies, lest they displace an indigenous, superior mode of life.” [Basalla 88:175]
• Up till its defeat in the Anglo-Chinese Wars of the late 19th century, the Chinese regarded all foreigners as so inferior that they could not negotiate with China except in accordance with its humiliating tribute system, e.g. requiring them to kowtow before the emperor. See section V-4.E.5 and its sources.
• In 1900, an anti-foreigner movement called the Boxer Rebellion, with the full approval of China’s government, attacked and massacred every foreigner they could get their hands on, beseiging the survivors in the Legation Quarter in Peking. This was neither the first nor the last time this had happened, as an attempt was made to do the same in 1927. [Townsend 33:29-30]
• “National pride and haughtiness made the Chinese discriminate against foreign countries, calling their own land “Chung-kuo” (the central state, middle kingdom, or the superior country); some even were willing to believe that other countries belonged to their country “China”…
Nevertheless, the patriotic Chinese had to recognize the worth of foreign culture to some extent. Therefore, they tried another angle in order to show the superiority of their culture; namely, they claimed that all kinds of studies and true teachings were originally founded in China. When Buddhism was recognized as a teaching which stated truth, the Chinese showed the superiority of traditional Chinese thought by saying that “Buddhism was originally taught by the Chinese”…
This way of thinking also influenced the Chinese historians of natural science. Although scholars of the Ch’ing dynasty (1644–1908) were interested in and accepted the culture of Europe to some extent, they were still proud of the superiority of Chinese culture in the same way. They accepted the astronomy of Europe, but they said that, although European astronomy had become fairly well developed, it originally came from the astronomy of China, for Chinese historians wrote that many students of astronomy went to foreign countries in order to escape war in the Chou dynasty, so that the current astronomy of Europe was developed by their descendants.” [Nakamura 64:274-6]
• “Before the Chinese were soundly beaten several times during the nineteenth century, they felt privileged to treat foreigners as “running dogs,” as they called them, unworthy of respect in trade agreements or anything else. In the earlier treaties and other official correspondence the Chinese used a character for the foreigner which in Chinese is a contemptuous term for barbarian, a character pronounced ee in the official Mandarin dialect. In informal references, Americans and Europeans were termed ouai go co, meaning “foreign dog.” Dogs in China, as over most of the Orient from time immemorial, are regarded as the final extremity of all that is filthy and opprobrious. They wander as starving scavengers around city and village streets, just as they did in Bible lands at the time of Lazarus. With such an arrogant official attitude, it is not astonishing that the common people were encouraged to exercise to the fullest their native talents for chicanery and insult in dealing with foreigners, and all kinds of outrages were current accordingly…
Even today this lofty arrogance of the Chinese, officials and civilians alike, is everywhere noticed. It is a compulsory rite for officials to affect politeness in their homes or offices, though they may inwardly froth with hatred. Their arrogance comes out in what they do – their contemptuous disregard of inquiring letters, their subtle insults which escape all but an initiated veteran familiar with their customs, and their quick change of front as soon as they have a strong momentary advantage. And even the most bedraggled ricksha coolie nurses this inner conviction of his superiority to any foreigner, which he does not always take pains to conceal after the fare and the tip are in his hands. To all Chinese it is a circumstance for immense contempt that the foreigner cannot speak Chinese with the exact intonation of the native…” [Townsend 33:260-2]
• “It was here in Nanjing, in 1988, that an inceident involving African and Chinese students at Heihai university resulted in more than 3,000 Chinese students taking to the streets to protest the presence of African students in China. Demonstrations spread to Shanghai, Beijing, and other cities and lasted for many days. At Wuhan Industrial College, Chinese students not only protested against the attendance of African students, but demanded that “all black people be removed from China.” Authorities did nothing to halt these race rallies.
According to Dujon Johnson, an African American China-academic, similar protests occurred in China in all but two years between 1979 and 1989. In 1988, the former general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Zhao Ziyang, stated during a meeting on national unity that racism was a universal problem, but didn’t exist in China. In 2007, at a nightclub in Beijing, police officers sporting black jumpsuits arrested arrested and sadistically beat some 20 black men, including students, tourists, and the son of a Caribbean diplomat. A caucasian witness from the United States said he had never seen anything so savage, claiming there was blood in the streets and cops had attacked any black person they could find.” [Parfitt 12:261-2]
————
B. Whites behave more morally than Chinese, in every respect.
Whites behave more morally than Chinese in every respect. Reviewed above are Whites’ greater honor, compassion, and honesty. As reviewed, Whites are more considerate to strangers they encounter in public, being more friendly, respectful, and helpful. Chinese are pushy, rude and loud in their random public encounters [1]. Whites are more responsible about picking up after themselves and keeping public places clean. Chinese habitually litter, and their public eating facilities, toilets, streets, train stations, etc. are often filthy [2]. Chinese are the worst air and water polluters, and responsible for about 67% of the plastic waste dumped into the world’s oceans [3]. Chinese are also well known to be cheaters on school applications and exams [4]. Whites also have greater patriotism [5]. When a White nation is attacked, people of all its regions join together in patriotic defense, and military leaders are unified and loyal. When China is attacked, people of distant regions are indifferent and the military divided; regional generals selling their wares only at dear prices or colluding with the enemy [6]. The greater regard for honor and duty of White officials is discussed in section II-8.E. What morals the Chinese have are the obligatory bonds of family, and conventions of etiquette carried out with guests and customers, usually for a definite purpose.
1. • “Daily life throws Chinese into contact with a host of persons with whom they have a transient association which is unlikely to be repeated – taxi drivers, fellow passengers, sales staff, fellow spectators, tourists, waiters, and so on. There is no effective response towards such people, for they are outside one’s established groups. The law of the jungle tends to prevail, with people seeking their own personal advantage, totally ‘indifferent’ to the needs and ‘rights’ of others. A careless pushiness, released by the absence of authority, is the order of the day. What Westerners would call rudeness and callousness are endemic to such encounters and result in some testy exchanges across cultural lines!” [Bond 91:56-7]
• Parfitt goes into much detail on his perpetual encounters with Chinese rudeness, including loud, inconsiderate speech, pushy walking, and obstructive standing in [Parfitt 12:61,79,90,145,188-9,211-2,241,251,282]
; “What little space that existed between people in the station was occupied by an assortment of repugnant smells and cigarette smoke. Shrill, static-filled announcements pierced the air and the floor was a greasy mess of refuse and phlegm. It was your typical public scene, really: people pushed, shoved, elbowed, cut in line, argued, shouted, smoked, emptied their lungs, and dropped their trash and cigarette butts where they stood.” [61]
; “A guidebook I had read in Taiwan described the way local people walked as akin to a “falling-leaf pattern.” What they forgot to mention is that leaves don’t aim for you. Not only will people walk straight at you if they want to get by (even in an open area with no one else around), but they come to abrupt halts on flights of stairs, congregate at the tops and bottoms of stairs (not to mention entrances, exits, and elevator doors), and will occasionally—and this is not an invention—stop in their tracks and begin to walk backwards. If you are passing through an open door while keeping to the right, there’s an excellent chance you’ll be met by someone trying to push through the five centimeters of space between your right elbow and the door frame; never mind that it would only take a second to either let you go or to step around to pass you on your left. In Mandarin, ‘go ahead,’, or ‘after you,’, is Ni xian zue. It’s seldom said. High school civics textbooks feature lessons on how to walk, how to form queues, how to use a public toilet, and so forth. Public notices and service announcements do the same. Hardly anyone pays the slightest bit of attention.” [188-9]
• “Turning to the subject of noise, Chinese people’s voices must be the loudest on earth…
Why do Chinese people shout when they talk? Because we are insecure by nature. The louder we shout, the more right we are. If we shout at the top of our lungs, we must be right, otherwise why expend so much energy? The above-mentioned behaviour patterns are damaging to both our self-image and our mental equilibrium.” [Yang 84]
• “Many first-time travelers to China find themselves splashed in the face by an ice-cold bucket of culture shock. They feel that they’ve entered a Bizarro World where everything is upside-down.
The etiquette rules that were hammered into them by their mothers have ceased to apply: Don’t talk with your mouth full and stop slurping! Keep your voice down for God sakes! Don’t point– it’s impolite to stare! Stop pushing and wait your turn patiently! Don’t spit, and whatever you do kids, don’t pee on the street!…
And maybe more importantly, I hope this information will help you keep your cool when you’re tempted to go ballistic on the guy who just cut in front of you in line…
Queue-busting and pushing always gets the most visceral reaction from foreigners; we reflexively want to open up a can of whoop-ass at the perceived offense (myself included). Others have a hard time getting used to people unabashedly staring and pointing at their gigantic and oddly angled laowai noses. For some, their hot button is the ever-present second-hand smoke (particularly in a No Smoking area).”
• www.china-mike.com/china-travel-tips/chinese-etiquette-tips/
; “My point is that, the average Chinese person who you meet on the street can seem cold and unfriendly. Bus driver and other civil servants in the cities who deal with the public on a daily basis can be especially dismissive and unhelpful (even abusive). Try not to take it personally…
For instance, many visitors are appalled by the way that the average Chinese person treats service people. Westerners are taught to treat everyone with common courtesy. However, you generally won’t see the average Chinese customer giving smiling eye contact to their waitress, for example. Instead, they seem to bark orders in a manner befitting that of a spoiled emperor.”
• www.china-mike.com/chinese-culture/understanding-chinese-mind/in-out-groups/
• Various webpages on Chinese rudeness:
Mobile Savagery: China Meets An Unprepared World
• theawl.com/mobile-savagery-china-meets-an-unprepared-world-65c923def411
How Chinese Tourists Usurped the Ugly Americans
• www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/05/how-ugly-chinese-tourists-became-new-ugly-americans/314773/
Wooing, and Also Resenting, Chinese Tourists
• www.nytimes.com/2013/09/17/business/chinese-tourists-spend-and-offend-freely.html
Why are Chinese tourists so rude? A few insights
• www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1251239/why-are-chinese-tourists-so-rude
Why Won’t the Chinese Line Up?
• www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-h-wu/why-wont-the-chinese-line_b_5387959.html
• The same Chinese who are reluctant to answer inquiries by visitors who need help (section II-1-2 and sources), are prompt to ask visitors personal questions:
; “Among the proprieties of opening small talk, when you meet a Chinese, one of his first questions will inquire how much money you make. If he comes to see you, he asks you what rent you pay, or how much your house costs. These are polite formalities observed out of regard for etiquette. [?] The purpose, so Chinese informed me, is to determine at once, by his income, “with what respect a person should be treated.”” [Townsend 33:107-8]
; “Don’t be surprised (or hopefully offended) if conversation suddenly turns to topics that you feel are too personal. For instance, westerners are often surprised and offended by comments about their personal appearance (such as their weight or nose…or size of their nose). Similarly, don’t be surprised if you’re asked questions about how much money you make. Or why you’re not married (or don’t have kids). In China, these types of nosy (pun intended) questions aren’t considered rude. Try not to be offended.”
• www.china-mike.com/china-travel-tips/chinese-etiquette-tips/
2. • “Three of the most notorious [Chinese] characteristics are filth, sloppiness and noisiness. In Taipei they once tried to mount a campaign against filth and disorder, but it only lasted a few days. Our kitchens and our homes are always in a mess. In many residential areas, as soon as the Chinese move in, everyone else moves out. A young woman I know, a college graduate, married a Frenchman and moved to Paris. Soon their home became a regular stopping-off place for her friends who were travelling in Europe. She told me that as more and more Asians (not all of them Chinese) started to move into the building, the French started to move out. This is a terribly disturbing thought. But when I went to Paris and saw the place for myself, there were ice-cream wrappers and saqals strewn about everywhere, children running and yelling in the halls, and graffiti covering the walls. The whole place smelled like a mouldy cellar as well. I asked her, ‘Can’t you organise all the residents and clean the place up? She replied, ‘It’s impossible. The French are not the only people who think we are filthy slobs; after living here like this, we feel the same way.'” [Yang 84]
• A Canadian traveller in China, Troy Parfitt, describes in appalling detail the filthy, unkept conditions of contemporary China; in Chinese neighborhoods [Parfitt 12: 52,77,119-20,150-1,154,179,196,211,227-8,267]; restaurants [85,75,251]; transportation facilities [61,79,85,118,145,282-3]; recreational areas [76]; hospitals [277-8]; and toilets [86,220,267,277,283,386]; “What little space that existed between people in the station was occupied by an assortment of repugnant smells and cigarette smoke. Shrill, static-filled announcements pierced the air and the floor was a greasy mess of refuse and phlegm. It was your typical public scene, really: people pushed, shoved, elbowed, cut in line, argued, shouted, smoked, emptied their lungs, and dropped their trash and cigarette butts where they stood.” [61]
• “Off the subject of clothing [Chinese] do not show up so favorably. The inside of an average Chinese house would make a hog feel fastidious. Of course the pigs, chickens, goats and whatever other domestic animals the family has have free range inside, in the daytime as a matter of the family’s indifference and at night as a protection against theft of the animals. This arrangement is much on the order of what may be seen in many parts of Europe, particularly the Latin countries. But in China there is vastly more apathy to the natural accumulation of dirt. The floor in a Chinese house is usually composed of hard-packed clay. Holes form in this, and in wet weather puddles of water, so that within the house there are mudholes to catch the stray filth brushed about…” [Townsend 33:74-7]
; “Everybody at the table eats out of a common bowl in the middle. The clashing chop sticks in this greedy melee sound like a competition in typing. Sideswiping and midair collisions come thick and fast even between the most formal and cultured Chinese, and are thought nothing of, so that within a round or two the beautiful embroidered tablecloth, handsomely decorated with flowers, is slopped right and left with fragments of meat and spots of gravy. To make a clean piercing stroke into the middle of the table and snip a morsel between the slippery round sticks requires careful judgment of distance and timing, something like the skill called for in fencing. If you don’t like a mouthful of what you extract, it is all right to spew it out on the floor and try again.” [45]
; “And when an American-owned building is finally abandoned after extended occupancy by Chinese troops, it would not be used by a self-respecting New England farmer for his horse. The Chinese, in many instances, keep adding layers of their human filth under them, covering it anew with straw each day, until in time the floors of a once tidy building are more revolting than a pig pen. No compensation is possible under our present policy for such damage.” [312]
• “People in most developing countries, such as India and China, are vigorous litterers–even in otherwise beautiful places like the beach. In China, I think the problem is partly due to the attitude is that someone is being paid for cleaning up (which is true)…
At times, this not-in-my-backyard attitude is humorous (to me anyway). For instance, in China, many even litter in their own building—in common areas, like the lobby and hallways (sometimes you’ll see huge red stains in stairwells from betel nut, a kind of Asian chewing tobacco). The attitude is as long as the trash isn’t literally inside my house, I don’t a shitake. Similarly, you might notice store owners diligently sweeping trash in front of their own store…and on to the street, just a few feet away.
This also helps explain why Chinese public toilets never have toilet paper. In the same episode of “An Idiot Abroad,” the clueless traveler is dumbfounded because he assumes that Chinese people don’t use toilet paper after they drop a deuce.”
• www.china-mike.com/chinese-culture/understanding-chinese-mind/in-out-groups/
• “Eating: This is where the cultural differences really begin to show. To the average Westerner eating out in China, it seems that there are no rules governing table manners. The guy next to me is slurping his noodles in Dolby THX surround sound. And that dude is chewing with his mouth full…while screaming into his cell phone. And it’s okay to emit ear-shattering burps that register on the Richter scale?
But Chinese table manners do exist….they’re just not as evident to the Western eye.”
• www.china-mike.com/china-travel-tips/chinese-etiquette-tips/
3. • Parfitt reviews some of the staggering facts of Chinese pollution in this video, such as only 1% of urban residents breath air considered safe, 700,000 deaths per year from air pollution, 80% of cities have no sewage treatment facilities, 43% of their river water isn’t fit for human contact and 75% unfit for fishing, etc.
China’s Staggering Pollution Problems.
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyrIY4W3oJM
• Other videos on the world’s pollution king:
101 East – China’s dirty secrets
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLwVycO7V-k
China’s “Cancer Villages” Acknowledged by Government Report
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpvH4ShAwsY
Age of China: “Cancer Villages”
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTlc-Xiszjw
China’s ‘cancer villages’ reveal dark side of economic boom
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2tmLTsFyAY
10 Images Show China’s Doomsday Air Pollution
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEwNyJUYg7w
• China tops world for air pollution and carbon emissions, officials admit.
• www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/2051914/china-tops-world-air-pollution-and-carbon-emissions
• Lefties love to berate White people about ocean polution, but of course Whites do hardly any of it: “Even though countries don’t report on how much plastic they are flushing, a recent study suggests that around 86% of the plastic running through rivers was coming from a single continent—Asia…
Seven of the top 20 rivers from all continents, which originate or pass through China’s major cities, are contributing around two thirds (67%) of plastic released through rivers into the oceans. The Yangtze River that runs through Shanghai, one of China’s most populous areas, tops the list, followed by Ganges, a trans-boundary river that runs through northern India and Bangladesh. Next is Xi River, the western tributary of the Pearl River, a major water source for the 100 million people residing in Guangdong Province, China’s most populous province.
The Dutch researchers found that the Yangtze river’s mouth, where the conduit meets the sea, had a plastic concentration of 4,137 particles per cubic meter—and contributed 20,000 tonnes (22,046 metric tons) of plastic every year to the oceans. In December, two ships dumped more than 100 tonnes (110 metric tons) of waste such as needles and plastic tubes into the Yangtze river.”
Asia’s rivers send more plastic into the ocean than all other continents combined
• qz.com/1004589/80-of-plastic-in-the-ocean-can-be-traced-back-to-asias-rivers-led-by-china-indonesia-myanmar-a-study-by-netherland-based-the-ocean-cleanup-found/
4. • Some websites will do:
How an industry helps Chinese students cheat their way into and through U.S. colleges
• www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/college-cheating-iowa/
How a Chinese company bought access to admissions officers at top U.S. colleges
• www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/college-charity/
How top U.S. colleges hooked up with controversial Chinese companies
• www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/college-charities/
How Asian test-prep companies swiftly exposed the brand-new SAT
• www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/college-sat-two/
SAT Scores of Asian Students Cancelled Over Cheating
• blogs.voanews.com/student-union/2017/02/27/sat-scores-of-asian-students-cancelled-over-cheating/
Why do Chinese students think it’s OK to cheat?
• www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1974986/why-do-chinese-students-think-its-ok-cheat
New Analysis: Foreign Students Five Times As Likely To Cheat In College
• dailycaller.com/2016/06/05/students-from-china-are-cheating-like-crazy-in-college/
Chinese students found cheating to get into U.S. colleges
• money.cnn.com/2014/07/01/pf/college/chinese-students-cheating/index.html
A Q and A about cheating among Chinese students
• www.davisenterprise.com/local-news/ucd/a-q-and-a-about-cheating-among-chinese-students/
Truth and Lies and Cheating in China
• www.hackwriters.com/Teachingchina.htm
Chinese school uses ‘newspaper hats’ to stop cheating: It’s hilarious, but effective!
• indianexpress.com/article/trending/bizarre/chinese-school-uses-newspaper-hats-to-stop-cheating-its-hilarious-but-effective-4457513/
Asian Immigrants and What No One Mentions Aloud [high school cheating, etc]
• educationrealist.wordpress.com/2013/10/08/asian-immigrants-and-what-no-one-mentions-aloud/
5. • See the note 1 sources of the last section. Chinese racial pride and zenophobia, their contempt for foreigners (discussed in the last section), is of course not the same as self-sacrificing patriotism for country.
• “Conspicuous examples of filial piety became popular themes in literature and in art… The parallel virtue of loyalty was overshadowed: The Chinese emphasis on personal relationships is further illustrated by the fact that loyalty remained entirely a matter of personal fealty to superior or sovereign and was not transformed into patriotism.” [Dawson 78:89-91]
• “Esteem for family has a close relation with the social structure of China where the individual family could live without relationship to the prosperity of the nation. For the same reason, patriotism in the political sense did not develop well in China. Therefore, it was natural that the Chinese who esteemed only the family and relatives were surpassed in patriotic feelings by the Japanese who possessed a strong sense of nationalism in the modern period. ” [Nakamura 64:270]
6. • “People in practice more often than not were loyal to their province or village. That became painfully clear in the nineteenth century in various conflicts in which central government was involved and that parts of the country simply did not regard as their business. We see that happening during the First Opium War, when most provinces that were not directly involved simply stayed out of the conflict, and, again, during the war between France and China in 1884–5, when large parts of China did not participate in the war effort…[etc]” [Vries 15:411]
• “Chinese soldiers are always ready to switch to the opposing side, and on promises of slightly better pay or more prompt pay or better territory to plunder, vast numbers of them are constantly doing so. Switching to the opposition is common among officers as well as among men. Thousands deserted to the Communist side from the armies sent against the Communists from Canton and Amoy last year, and a few days later swarms of these were reported to have rejoined their former outfits. The number of officers in China who have remained steadily with one allegiance during the past three years is not tabulated, but it may be estimated as very nearly zero. When foreign groups get together in China and conversation turns to what it usually turns to – the local rackets – the latest reports of switched allegiances are exchanged in the manner that a club group in America would discuss stock market fluctuations…” [Townsend 33:200-7]
; “It is well appreciated in China that a leader with a fair number of soldiers will set out to make himself a menace, either to the Japanese or to Chinese rivals, purely for the purpose of raising a bid to buy him off. The more formidable he can make himself look, the more money he can expect the “enemy” to offer him to lie down and retire, or accept a “position.” Therein looms spending money for a youthful leader and a nice nest-egg for an elderly one.
To the Japanese this business is a matter of dollars and cents. If a Chinese general can be bought off more cheaply than the cost in munitions and manpower required to rout him, he is accordingly bought off. The number bought off is an imposing total. For years it was the regular way of getting results in China. Of course, in a good many instances the leaders bought off in this fashion find it expedient to have a few of their coolies slain in a mock skirmish with the opposition troops. That lends a little face to the procedure. In Chinese military doings at large, it is significant how many commanders of large armies “withdraw” or “suffer losses dictating a compromise” when the intimate facts of the affair show that the commander really put up no honest resistance at all.” [206]
• “[Reviews how Kai-shek’s was fighting the Communists over control of the illegal opium trade during China’s war with Japan.] Chiang Kai-shek’s regime can be seen, not as some sort of aberration, but rather as a natural extension or reflection of Chinese culture and society. The Chinese had but a single task: to fight the enemy, but they lacked the co-ordination and focus to do so. Every time the wind changed, so did their strategy, and those making the decisions were too busy proselytizing, “conserving their energy,” or lining their pockets to possess any genuine concern about the fate of the nation.” [Parfitt 12:134-5]
————
C. Cultural norms of morality are based on genotypes.
It may be objected that morals are mediated by cultural norms, and that Chinese living in White nations behave better than those in China. This is true, but cultural norms are themselves forged by genotypes. Cultural norms in White nations are shaped by their predominantly White genes. Chinese who move to a White nation quickly learn that among Whites they can’t get away with the same shenanigans taken for granted in their homeland (not so blatantly, at least), and so they behave better. However, if the proportion of Chinese genes in a country passes the point at which Chinese dispositions determine cultural norms, Chinese moral culture and behavior will revert accordingly.
————
II-6. Crime, abuse, and war: Whites are more aggressive, Chinese are more deceptive.
A. White deviants commit more crimes of aggression; Chinese commit more crimes of deception.
Whites are more vigorous and aggressive than Chinese, and so, while Whites have low crime rates, they have more deviant individuals who commit aggressive sorts of crimes than do Chinese. Chinese are averse to physical confrontation (section II-1), but commit more crimes involving deception, such as corruption, counterfeiting, and fraud. Chinese regularly abuse their power (next section), and profusely engage in corruption (section II-8.E). Until very recently, paper currency and face-value coins were only sporadically used in China because of rampant overprinting and counterfeiting [1], and precious metal coins were frequently debased and so had to be regularly ‘chopped’ to check for authenticity [2]. Chinese are virtuosi at all forms of scam artistry, posing as fake English and art students, fake tea house hosts, fake taxi drivers, fake monks, officials, doctors, policemen, school superintendents, etc., and utilizing fake bus stops or fake credit card machines, and the like [3]. Chinese are infamous for knockoffs of White-created products, and only the Chinese are audacious enough to sell rats as beef, plastic as rice, and concocted fake eggs, walnuts, etc. [4]. China’s fakes trade is an estimated 8% of its economy [5].
1. • “After [paper money’s] liberal, inflationary use under the Ming, it had all but disappeared. At the end of the eighteenth century, the role of various paper moneys in general, not that of paper money issued by government, as a means of payment had (again) become substantial. Paper money issued by government only reappeared in 1853. But as compared to the situation in Britain, its importance still was fairly minor.” [Vries 15:258]
; “[G]overnment efforts to introduce paper money had ended in failure three times before in Chinese history, under the Sung, under the yuan and under the Ming. Every time China’s central government experimented with paper money it led to its over-issue, inflation and debasement, and all the chaos that goes with that… Paper money is fiduciary money – its use is based on trust, transparency and certain checks and balances. Those were oft
en lacking. During the big silver-drain crisis in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, a major reason to reject all proposals to issue paper notes (and the same goes for big coins with face values that were higher than their intrinsic values) was fear of bureaucratic corruption, fear that people would counterfeit these new moneys and lack of confidence in the state.” [262]
; “As copper coining was expensive, many old coins remained in circulation, especially as there was also much counterfeiting that was not systematically and efficiently tackled. ” [256]
; “One would also have to take into account money that was counterfeited. In absolute numbers we again are talking about huge amounts here. According to Deng in 1793 officials gathered some 20 millions catties of fake coins in Hunan, Hubei and Sichuan. In Yunnan alone more than 1 million strings of counterfeit cash coins were withdrawn from circulation during the Jiaqing reign.” [258]
; “Horesh claims that private paper money [in China] generally was restricted to the immediate region where it was issued and confined to certain regions only. Its use was based on personal and not institutional trust. Private bank note issuance in his view cannot be described as a pillar of the late imperial Chinese monetary system:
There is no solid foundation on which to assert that money shop scrip (broadly defined) was ‘well accepted’ in China in the late imperial era. This is because it constituted in all likelihood an insignificant part of China’s currency stock prior to 1900 and because the circulation of such scrip was regionally fragmented if not parochial.…” [259-60]
; “Towards the end of the eighteenth century, Chinese officials induced some silversmiths to manufacture dollars that in every respect were identical to the carolus dollar. Those silversmiths, however, did not manage to obtain a similar uniformity in design and weight because numerous artisans working quite independently of each other produced the coins. Moreover, the silversmiths adulterated the money by adding alloy up to 50 per cent. This then led to the prohibition of any further manufacturing
of silver dollars in China.” [261]
• “As of the early nineteenth century, China’s monetary and financial system was relatively primitive and inflexible. It was dependent on the maintenance of stable rates of exchange between the state-minted copper coins used in small, daily market transactions, on the one hand, and the unminted silver sycee (nearly pure bullion) used for the settlement of larger accounts. Fiat or paper instruments of credit were underdeveloped, and tended to be held in suspicion by “metalist” state ideologues; moreover, it is doubtful that the public would have trusted its largely unaccountable bureaucratic rulers sufficiently to accept state-issued notes at face value…
Devaluation of the coinage had also been hastened by the lowering of government quality standards and by a wave of counterfeiting, and with coins thus debased it was but natural that there would be a quickening demand for silver and an attendant decrease in the availability of the latter. Then, too, Chinese awareness of uniformity of foreign-minted silver dollars and of the savings in assay fees that accrued to the businessmen who used them allowed foreign silver coinage to circulate in China at an above-face-value premium, in turn drawing purer unminted Chinese sycee out of the country.” [Polachek 92:104-5]
• Arthur Smith wrote late in the 19th century: “There is a constant intermixture [in Chinese currency] of small or spurious cash, leading to inevitable disputes between dealers in any commodity. At irregular intervals the local magistrates become impressed with the evil of this debasement of the currency, and issue stem proclamations against it. This gives the swarm of underlings in the magistrate’s yamen an opportunity to levy squeezes on all the cash-shops in the district, and to make the transaction of all business more or less difficult. Prices at once rise to meet the temporary necessity for pure cash. As soon as the paying ore in this vein is exhausted — and it is not worked to any extent — the bad cash returns, but prices do not fall. Thus the irrepressible law by which the worse currency drives out the better, is never for an instant suspended. The condition of the cash becomes worse and worse, until, as in some parts of the province of Honan, every one goes to market with two entirely distinct sets of cash, one of which is the ordinary mixture of good with bad, and the other is composed exclusively of counterfeit pieces…
The banking system of China appears to be very comprehensive and intricate, and we know from Marco Polo that bank-bills have been in use from a very ancient period. But they are not by any means universal in their occurrence, and all of them appear to be exceedingly limited in the range of their circulation. The banks of two cities ten miles apart will not receive each other’s bills, and for a very good reason.” [Smith 94:255]
• Ralph Townsend in 1930: “Paper money is not extensively used. For one thing, the banks of issue are commonly banks people hesitate to trust, and then counterfeiting is very common…
Chinese subsidiary coinage is a hodgepodge. The majority of the people are not sufficiently well off to have much contact with silver dollars, and deal mainly in coppers and silver ten-cent and twenty-cent pieces. But these ten- and twenty-cent pieces are usually negotiable only in the province where they are issued, so that a Shanghai ten-cent piece, for example, will not be accepted in Amoy or Foochow. A further complication arises because ten dimes do not make a dollar nor do five twenty-cent pieces make a dollar. The rate of exchange between small coins and the dollar varies widely. Just before the Chinese New Year the lower denominations of coins become very cheap, with twelve or fourteen dimes selling for a dollar. This is because the country people, who have hoarded their money through the year, swarm suddenly into the cities and towns to purchase goods, swamping the market with small money, the only kind they ordinarily get their hands on.
But that is not the end of the confusion – it is only the beginning. The ordinary transactions of life for the majority are carried on with coppers, big fellows about the size of the obsolete American two-cent piece or the present English penny. These are called cents in reference to Chinese dollars. But the number of cents to a dollar varies from day to day, and on the same day from city to city. Thus Shanghai may quote three hundred coppers to the dollar on a given date, while another city will quote two hundred and eighty, and so on. The next week the exchange in Shanghai may be two hundred and ninety, and in Canton, two hundred and seventy-five or three hundred.
Some of the military moguls take advantage of the situation by posting an arbitrary exchange rate between shops and customers weekly, then alternately calling in all the small money or dollars, fixing a new rate of exchange and pocketing the difference, keeping this up twice a month or so through the year.” [Townsend 33:37]
• Recent: “There are problems with the money itself in China, too. Counterfeit notes, especially ¥50 and ¥100 bills, were once widespread throughout China, even in Hong Kong and Macau.”
• www.worldnomads.com/travel-safety/eastern-asia/china/cons-scams-and-counterfeit-money
• Today: “Counterfeit Money Scam: WHERE: Could be anywhere in China. THE SCAM: There are a lot of counterfeit bills in circulation…and who better to fool than clueless laowai tourist? Rules Of Thumb:
Carefully inspect any change, especially Y50 and Y100 bills. Does the note feel thin or slippery? Does the watermark look kosher? If it feels or looks wrong, don’t be shy about rejecting it (a common practice in China). If necessary, cancel the transaction and demand your money back.
If you’re getting cash from an ATM or changing money at a bank (i.e. not a money-changer), you won’t have to worry about getting counterfeit bills (usually Y100 notes). But instead, you should watch out for the old Bait-and-Switch. For example, you pay with your (real) Y100 and they secretly replace it with a fake note, claiming that you gave them the bogus note. Then, they’ll give you the fake one and ask for another one. They just made a tidy Y200 profit!…
Also alarms should be going off if someone claims they don’t have correct change and is “willing” to round up your change by giving you a larger bill. Or they might be trying to squeeze some extra money from you by asking you to give them an extra Y50 note so they can round off your change to an even (fake) Y100.”
• www.china-mike.com/china-travel-tips/avoiding-scams/
2. • “Devaluation of the coinage [in the late Qing era] had also been hastened by the lowering of government quality standards and by a wave of counterfeiting, and with coins thus debased it was but natural that there would be a quickening demand for silver and an attendant decrease in the availability of the latter. Then, too, Chinese awareness of uniformity of foreign-minted silver dollars and of the savings in assay fees that accrued to the businessmen who used them allowed foreign silver coinage to circulate in China at an above-face-value premium, in turn drawing purer unminted Chinese sycee out of the country.” [Polachek 92:104-5]
• Arthur Smith in the late 19th century: “The chaotic condition of the silver market in China is due partly to the deep-seated suspicion which cash-shops entertain for their customers, and which customers cherish towards the cash-shops, in each case with the best grounds. Every chopped dollar in south China, every chopped piece of chopped silver in any part of China, is a witness to the suspicious nature of this great and commercial people; keen as they are to effect a trade, they are keener still in their reluctance to do so.” [Smith 94:255]
• Ralph Townsend in 1930: “A good deal of silver money is counterfeited also, but every time you hand out a silver piece in China the taker will ring it against something to test the timbre. After you have had a number of bogus dollars and smaller pieces palmed off on you, you become pretty good at testing yourself. The exchange shops, which are everywhere, stamp each dollar coming into their tills with what is called a chop, that is, a stamp bearing the name of the shop. A purplish dye is used which is supposed to turn yellow if the coin is not good silver.” [Townsend 33:37-8]
3. • “[T]he commerce of the Chinese is a gigantic example of the national insincerity… It is a popular proverb that to put a lad into trade is to ruin him. False weights, false measures, false currency, and false goods — these are phenomena from which it is difficult to escape in China. Even in the great establishments which put up conspicuous signs, notifying the public that they will here find “goods genuine, prices real,” “positively no two prices,” the state of things does not correspond to the surface seeming.” [Smith 94:280-1]
• Articles:
Avoiding common tourist scams in China, by China Mike.
• www.china-mike.com/china-travel-tips/avoiding-scams/
Common scams in China – How to avoid them
• www.worldnomads.com/travel-safety/eastern-asia/china/cons-scams-and-counterfeit-money
Top Ten Scams in Beijing
• www.chinahighlights.com/beijing/article-top-10-scams.htm
22 Most Common Tourist Scams in China
• travelscams.org/asia/common-tourist-scams-china/
4. • “China is a nation of much fakery; there’s fake sushi, fake steak, fake gravy, fake music, fake goods, fake pharmaceuticals, fake news, fake weather reports, fake education, fake rights, fake laws, fake courts, fake judges, a fake congress, a fake constitution…” [Parfitt 12:75]
• Videos:
5 Fake Foods in China That Are Totally Disgusting
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb20RAip3l0
Fake food scandal continues to rock China
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgHOI4U5xxM
Food safety in China: Noodle factory’s dirty secrets
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRcfzL23kUM
Rat MEAT Sold As Lamb In China
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXMIgHEXkyw
Toxic Fake Food Items Produced in China
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=H322IqmT5ws
Beware of fake eggs from China – Boycott made in China products
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGvnsrSqZic
China_ Faking It -101 East (fake antiques/art)
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-DXKEHkcZk
5. • “China’s fakes trade is an estimated 8% of its booming economy.” [5:30]; Faking clothing brands, golf clubs, sports equipment, etc.
PRC- People’s Republic of Counterfeit – The Fake Trade Part A 2/4
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=E617D33UQgQ
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B. Much exploitation and abuse by Chinese is not regarded as crime.
Chinese commit many offenses that aren’t regarded as crime, since dominance relationships are sanctioned by Chinese ethics [1] and law [2]. What Whites call slavery, abuse, and exploitation, Chinese call governing, parenting, and managing. Each of these institutions in China is strictly hierarchical, with rulers having arbitrary power and subordinates having few if any rights. Chinese governments dictate to their subjects [3], Chinese patriarchs abuse or exploit their women and children [4], and Chinese bosses “squeeze” their employees [5], and these ‘victims’ can scarcely appeal to law enforcement. Chinese are also prolific at lesser moral offenses as discussed above, such as verbal assaults and slander, littering and polluting, duplicity and betrayal. Much of this devilry is just taken for granted as a matter of course in China.
1. • Confucianism, the prevalent ethics system in China, is largely about respecting hierarchies: ruler to subject, father to son, husband to wife, and elder to younger. See section II-8.B and its sources.
• “Thus the Confucian contrast between superiors and inferiors meant that the noble and the mean received different punishments; and since, according to li, clothing, houses, marriages, funerals, and sacrifices must all reflect social status, sumptuary laws came to be written into the codes.” [Dawson 78:163]
2. • Many laws and punishments in China were/are based on the relative status of offender and victim, with higher status advantaged and lower status disadvantaged. See [Bodde 91:197-8]; [Fairbank 76:121-2]; [Dawson 78:163]
• Chinese officials had various legal privileges and were exempt from various criminal laws; [Dawson 78:50-1]; [Fairbank 57:245-6].
3. • On the Chinese state’s despotic power and exploitation and its citizens’ lack of rights, see section II-8.B-D and its sources.
• On the pervasive corruption in China, that demanded payment for any and all government services rendered, see section II-8.E and its sources.
• On China’s brutal, state oppressions, see section II-3 and its sources.
• “The governing class as a whole is not the best but the worst in the Empire. An intelligent Taotai [high official] remarked to a foreigner that “the officials under the Emperor are all bad men and ought to be killed, but it would be of no use to kill us, as the next incumbents would be just as bad as we.” [Smith 94:285]
4. • Family patriarchs had nearly absolute power over the labor and lives of their women and children, and a daughter-in-law is more a work slave to her in-laws than a wife to her husband; see section II-7.B and its sources.
• Girls were routinely dealt the horrible torture of foot binding; see section I-3 and its sources.
• Beyond foot-binding, daughters (-in-law), often sold as child-brides, are often treated brutally and their only recourse is suicide. Read [Smith 94:198-204] for unsavory details.
• The beauty of women is greatly subordinated, with severe restrictions on sex (and women considered dirty after menstruation, etc.), largely to minimize her power. See [Bodde 91:271-81]; [Nakamura 64:261-3]; [Bond 91:62-3].
; “[Chinese culture] says to the female: To be attractive to men is unnatural. . .Your main duty is toward your parents-in-law. . .While the gratification of sex in the physiological sense is not barred, all possible awareness of it is to be eliminated, and all secondary expressions, such as tenderness of feeling and mutual possessiveness, are to be banned.” [Bodde 91:275]
• “Was rearing “break-even” daughters irrational, as exasperated Chinese parents often claimed? Were daughters “useless things” that merely drained the patricorporate purse? This is an important question, and one does not have to sell one’s soul to the Demon of Rational Choice to ask it. Chinese parents were empowered to allocate their children’s work and marriages very much as they chose, while at the same time they were obliged by law and custom to channel the inheritance of means of production only to sons. Maintaining a legacy for a son might oblige parents to skimp on the care and feeding of that son’s sisters. “Zhong nan, qing nu” – “Boys matter, girls don’t” – was a description of parental duty as much as sentiment…
In many times and places, Chinese developed local forms of marriage practice that treated daughters almost like commodities. Arthur Wolf’s work shows minor marriage as one extreme of this tendency as Stockard’s and Chuang’s work on delayed transfer marriage shows the other.” [Engelen 05:335]
5. • “[W]hat conclusions can we currently draw about Chinese organizational structure? Redding and Wong include the following:
(a) Centralization of the power of decision making, usually to a single dominant owner, manager, entrepeneur, founder, or father figure.
(b) A lower level of specialization, with fewer and/or less breaking up of the organization into specialized departments, and with more people responsible for a spread of activities across a number of fields.” [Bond 91:72]
; “Chinese in leadership positions enjoy a wider range of authority for which they are unaccountable than do those from more democratic legalistic systems. The result is that more decisions are made in private by fewer people in Chinese culture… [L]eaders are not required to justify their decisions openly.” [85]
; “[G]eneral observation and the available research data suggest that Chinese leaders are ‘bossier’ or more authoritarian than their Western counterparts. Given the concentration of power in any position of leadership, they spend less time consulting in large meetings, reasoning with peers, persuading subordinates, making concessions within the workplace, writing memos, defining job specifications, developing subordinates, and instituting formal systems of control. Conversely, Chinese managers spend more time making decisions alone, giving orders, supervising the execution of these directives personally… Such are the consequences of paternalism, a management style that is centralized, personalized, and resists explicit formal guidelines and contractual obligations.” [79-80]
; “In a cultural system that gives wide-ranging power to those in authority, there must be a reciprocal emphasis on compliance and loyalty in those subject to that authority. As we have already seen, this socialization begins early in family life, with the prizing of quiet and tractable children. ‘Instant, exact, and complete obedience’ is the ideal…
[O]bservation and research confirm the effects of the Confucian hierarchy. Subordinates are less likely to volunteer opinions, take individual initiative, or depart from standard operating procedures without a superior’s approval. For the consequences of making a mistake will devolve upon the subordinate and their will be little institutional protection against the superior’s wrath…” [82-3]
• “In the dining room the same system prevails. You tip the dining room No. 1. The employment system in the hotel is a picture of the way much of the labor in China is managed. Nobody relies altogether on his personal earnings for a livelihood. Nor can anyone keep his personal earnings for himself. Each strategically brings pressure to collect toll-squeeze as it is called in China – from somebody else. And somebody else is ever waiting to collect from him. Even the beggars are organized into guilds, with elaborate systems of squeeze and counter-squeeze upon one another, and the whole organization, in turn, must pay squeeze to other organizations. Everybody pays to get a job and pays to keep it. And everybody is ferociously determined to make his collected squeeze as big as possible and his paid-out squeeze as little as possible.” [Townsend 33:5]
• “An interesting volume remains to be written by some one who has the requisite knowledge, on the theory and practice of Chinese squeezes — a practice which extends from the Emperor on his throne to the lowest beggar in the Empire. With that practical sagacity for which they are so deservedly noted, the Chinese have reduced this business to a perfect system, which can no more be escaped than one can escape the pressure of the atmosphere. Vicious and demoralising as the system is, it is not easy to see how it can be done away with, except by a complete reorganisation of the Empire.” [Smith 94:282]
• Workers in China are ruthlessly exploited, with no rights, few safety regulations, endless work hours, and few breaks. Some videos:
Santa’s Workshop – Inside China’s Slave Labour Toy Factories
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF8jUDzz5bE
China Factories, Brutal Conditions Described
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQPrbwWWUD4
Inside Look at Sweatshop in China Where Children Work 20 Hour Days
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=ev4Gyvz8AhQ
Sweatshops in China
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wmEkdkQlMM
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C. Whites fight more wars; Chinese have more rebellions.
Whites launch more wars than do Chinese, while Chinese launch more mass revolts against their tyrannical governments. White soldiers will engage in battle aggressively, while Chinese armies are reluctant to take the field and often pursue unaggressive forms of resolution, such as deception, bribery, subversion, and mediation [1]. Some Chinese weapons were designed as much to make terrifying noise as to inflict damage [2]. Warfare between Whites tends to be more destructive, because White governments are better organized and stronger (section V-3.E-K) and have greater technological capabilities (section V-2.G.6). Though Chinese as individuals rarely defy authority, when oppression becomes intolerable they rebel en masse, and have had sufficient reason to do so hundreds of times throughout their history—more than any other people [3].
1. • Bodde explains that China’s expansion was due more to gradual emigration and contradictory agricultural systems, than to aggressive warfare [Bodde 91:250-2]; “Of course there were emperors—the Han emperor Wu (140-87) was one of them—who felt a compulsive need for the personal glory associated with military expansion. But by and large, China’s most serious external wars—those against a seemingly endless succession of tribal peoples from inner Asia—stemmed from contradictions inherent in two different ways of life: that of the sedentary Chinese, based on intensive grain culture, and that of the Inner Asian tribesmen, based on intensive animal husbandry.” [252]
• Even when Chinese loudly berate each other, it seldom leads to a physical fight; see section II-1 and its sources.
• Townsend discusses the timidity (to put it mildly) of Chinese military and soldiers in [Townsend 33:103-5,215-6,285]; “Usually [fighting] can be stopped by the go-betweens, the “friend pigeons” who make interminable trips from one camp to the other, bargaining down the amount of money that is to be passed to square things, naturally adding in a little to keep themselves. These “friend pigeons” are one of the foremost institutions of China. Every Chinese is on occasion a friend pigeon to some other Chinese, and as often relies upon another for himself. Everything from murder to marriage involves go-betweens, for Chinese have a strange dread of mixing words face to face over a difficult issue. All matters are approached with the most roundabout deviousness, so that in extremely precarious affairs a third person may be asked to tell a fourth person who will relay the intended message to the other party of the issue.” [216]
• “The use of physical violence to maintain order was seen as a last resort, a confession that indoctrination and suasion had been ineffective and the regime perhaps lacked that popular acquiescence which constituted the Mandate of Heaven. Consequently China’s miltary tradition included many nonviolent methods—mediation by third parties, negotiation, espionage, bribery and subversion, splitting followers from leaders, intimidation and cajolery, and all forms of deception.” [Fairbank 76:70]
• “Chiang’s principal aim was to conserve his forces while putting on a good show, a long-standing Chinese military tradition. In Chinese traditional warfare, firecrackers played a key role, as did hexes, gongs, stink-bombs, and various other evil smells. In the early twentieth century, when warlords got their hands on modern weaponry, seldom was it used for anything but effect. The objective, as author and historian Sterling Seagrave has noted, was to first frighten one’s opponent by making a lot of noise and then strike a political settlement.” [Parfitt 12:130]
2. • See the Parfitt citation in the last note.
• “Chinese long preceded the Europeans in the use of explosive powder, whether for display (fireworks) or use in weapons. Yet a study of their armament reveals a singular inability to enhance, by implication an indifference to, the destructive capacity of their bombards and cannon, to the point where they wreaked more fright than damage. Their very names bore witness to their inefficacy: thus we have the “nine-arrows, heart-penetrating, magically poisonous fire-thunderer,” a tube designed to blow a cluster of arrows in the direction of the enemy. Joseph Needham (1979) recognizes that these could not have gone very far, “since the gunpowder was not exerting its full propellant force.”… Or the “eight-sided magical, awe-inspiring wind-and-fire cannon,” a vase-shaped bombard used to blow rubble and rubbish. Too bad those opposing these devices could not be told of their potent, magical, awe-inspiring names; they might have surrendered on the spot.” [Landes 06:19]
; “Military treatises of the sixteenth century describe hundreds of variations: “skyflying tubes,” apparently descended from the fire lances of five hundred years earlier, used to spray gunpowder and flaming bits of paper on the enemy’s sails; “gunpowder buckets” and “fire bricks”—grenades of powder and paper soaked in poison; other devices packed with chemicals and human excrement, intended to frighten, blind, and presumably disgust the enemy…” [Landes 98:53]
3. • “When times grew hard, a popular faith with leaders from the bottom fringes of the upper class might produce the fanaticism to mobilize violent rebellion. Since Chinese history had seen this many times, officials and gentry regularly proscribed heterodox sects. When lying low under persecution, the teaching might be transmitted orally and secretly from master to disciple, impossible to eradicate. Moreover, sects proliferated in great variety: in the modern era the Great Way of Former Heaven, the Way of Pervading Unity, the Heavenly Principle Sect, the Eight Trigrams, all had a common tincture as scattered groups of believers in a common religion, “normally diffuse, potentially cohesive” as Susan Naquin puts it. She has traced the process of mobilization by which leaders of the Eight Trigrams Sect, millenarian believers in the White Lotus cult of the Eternal Mother, plotted a North China revolt in 1813 that even invaded the For-bidden City for a few hours. Utilizing the generally illiterate members of a fragmented religious cult for armed uprising was not easy. Such a movement, to succeed, had to create or join with a military force.” [Fairbank 76:138]
• “Viewed from afar, China seemed to lead a stable and ponderous existence. Yet internally it was never quiet and stable. No other nations had so many peasant rebellions, was plagued by so many civil wars, and was invaded so often; yet no nation preserved its characteristic culture so well. A paradoxical situation existed up till 1839: China was often too weak militarily, or politically, to resist invasion, but survived because of ‘the extraordinarily integrative and absorptive power of Chinese civilization, a power which no invader before modern times was able to withstand.'” [Qian 85:90]
; “During the millennium after the ninth century, the evolutionary pattern of the history of Western Europe contrasts notably with that of traditional China. At the western end of Eurasia there were [long list of intellectual revolutions]. At the eastern end of Eurasia there was an equal number of, if not more, dynastic shifts, rebellions, and invasions.” [31]
• “Seven characteristics of Chinese rebellions can be identified. First, the Chinese peasantry
easily qualified as the most rebellious among all known farming classes in world history. From 210 B.C. to 1900 A.D. there were in all 2,106 major peasant rebellions in China, each on average lasting for seven years with 226,000 participants. Rebels were responsible for establishing at least 48 régimes.” [Deng 03:36-8]
• “Although the populations of the two empires were roughly of the same magnitudes, there were far fewer Roman soldiers than soldiers in the Chinese Han Europe. The scale of Chinese peasant wars in Middle Ages was comparable to those of world wars in industrialized society.” [Chen 90:5]
• “More troubling, however, are several analytical decisions that underpin revisionist mathematics:… a decision not to adjust for the massive mortality crises associated with major famines or the many violent popular uprisings, such as the White Lotus (1796–1804), Celestial Order (1811–14), Eight Trigrams (1813), Taiping (1850–64), Nian (1853–68), Miao (1850–72), and Muslim rebellions (1855–74), the inclusive casualty toll for which ranges from an estimated low of 60 million to a high of 118 million.” [Bryant 06:425]
• Today: “There are still violent land seizures in China, only now cadres usually sell what they confiscate to businessmen looking to build hotels and factories. Consequently, there are literally tens of thousands of clashes between peasants and police each year. China’s Ministry of Public Security has conceded that in 2005 there were some 87,000 “mass incidents” (riots, demonstrations, etc.), up from 74,000 in 2004. Such incidents regularly involve thousands of protesters and hundreds of paramiltary police. Also in 2005, paramiltary police in the village of Dongzhou in Guangdong province sprayed a crowd of protesters with gunfire, killing as many as a dozen.” [Parfitt 12:170]
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D. Competition is the law of nature.
Warfare is not necessarily immoral. Competition and struggle is the law of nature; a people must fight to secure resources. Aggression against one’s own kind, to which one is bonded by kinship, citizenship, or friendly relations, is more evil than aggression against aliens, especially inherently hostile ones. Lower-achieving races will always be envious of more successful ones and wish to take what they have created. In an honest martial contest, the more virtuous side prevails and humanity can thereby progress. All races have conquered or enslaved whom they could. Whites have been more magnanimous: ending slavery within their lands, freeing subject peoples whom they could have ruled forever, and providing unending aid and assistance to those they defeated. Wars launched by Whites have typically been confined to limited objectives and battles between soldiers on the field, and have ended with conciliatory peace treaties. Unfortunately, more degenerate warfare has occurred when an alien religion deluded some Whites into thinking that other Whites were evil “heretics”, and when alien subversives deluded some Whites into thinking that other Whites were evil “Huns” or “Nazis”.
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II-7. White families are voluntary unions; Chinese families are communist.
A. Chinese families are highly solidary because Chinese society is insecure; White families are freer.
People who feel insecure, who live in fear, untrusting of the general populace, tend to form solidary social groups for protection. Such groups are authoritarian, having a strong leader to maintain order and strong bonds of mutual sharing and responsibilities. The traditional Chinese family is such a group [1]. It is relatively large, often including the families of adult sons and extending to a wider family—a clan, that may encompass a whole village [2]. The patriarch exerts dominance over his women and children throughout their lives, controlling their residence, work, and marriage [3]. Traditional White families, especially those of northwest Europeans, are smaller and looser. Older children are relatively independent, free to choose their career, where they want to work, and whom they want to marry. They often choose to move out at a young age, to live alone, and to marry late or never. What portion of their property and income they share with their parents, siblings, and children, is up to them.
1. • “‘Blood is thicker than water’, especially in societies [China] characterized by relatively fixed residence and the absence of government sponsored social welfare. One’s family is the only constant in a shifting, indifferent world, so this relationship is constantly emphasized and nurtured throughout the lifespan.” [Bond 91:56]
; “These failures of the family are especially acute in Chinese society, however, precisely because there are fewer personal and institutional supports outside the cradle of the family. Many Chinese learn early to ‘swallow anger’ and to tolerate the intolerable because they do not see how they can live outside their family of origin or marriage. Chinese culture is no place to be alone.” [6-7]
; “”I suggest that these differences [Chinese less social and extroverted, more shy and socially anxious] arise mainly from an indifference to strangers and those who are not connected by blood or long association. Indeed, Chinese show an intense attachment to these primary groups, rather than a broad spread of looser attachments… The Chinese avoid those who are unfamiliar but are intensely involved with family and old friends.” [36-7]
• “The solidarity of the family group is also reflected in the traditional design of the large Chinese house which has walls screening it from the outside world, in contrast with the European house which is generally much more exposed to the community at large. Within the house, on the other hand, rooms lead into one another and there is much less privacy than in the modern European house.” [Dawson 78:139]
• “China’s history — both long-term and as recently as a generation ago — has largely been one of survival of the fittest. In the face of famines, wars, floods, and other countless hardships, families learned to survive by sticking together…which also meant being indifferent to the suffering of the desperate, anonymous masses.”
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2. • “Socially, the Chinese in the village until recently have been organized primarily in their kinship system and only secondarily as a neighborhood community. The village has ordi-narily consisted of a group of family and kinship units (lineages) which are permanently settled from one generation to the next and continuously dependent upon the use of certain landholdings.” [Fairbank 76:24-5]
3. • See next paragraph and its sources.
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B. Chinese families are tightly disciplined.
A traditional Chinese family is typically as large as its plot of land will support [1], and is hierarchical and tightly disciplined [2]. The patriarch is the dictator. He rules over his wife, and can have multiple wives, concubines and prostitutes [3]. There is an age-based hierarchy among the brothers (often numbered), as well as any wives or concubines [4]. Parents decide where their children will live, how they will work, and whom they will marry [5]. Children are required by law to obey their parents and to fully support them throughout life [6]. Penalties for disobedience are severe, including torture, imprisonment, and decapitation [7]. If a son brings an accusation of parental wrongdoing to authorities, he will be severely punished by law even if his charge was true [8]. Sons are not allowed to separate from parents without permission [9]. Daughters are usually sold off (via betrothal gifts) as a bride at a young age to become the life-long work slave of her in-laws [10]. The punishment for marrying without permission is typically 80 to 100 blows of the heavy bamboo [11]. Boys as well as girls can be hired out for work by parents, though girls are usually confined to the home [12].
1. • “The ideal Chinese family “consisted of the paterfamilias, his wife, and their sons and grandsons, each surrounded by their own families, all living together”, though it often fell short of this ideal due to limitations in land and means. “[F]amilies did expand whenever economic conditions permitted, so as to include not only the family as increased by proper marriages but concubines and their children as well.” [Dawson 78:138]
2. • “Relationships in the family were never between equals but were always marked by the distinction of superior and inferior, which we have seen to be characteristic of the Confucian philosophy. This even applied to the brotherly relationship, although sons were supposed to inherit equally. There is not even a single word for brother, but instead separate terms for elder and younger brother… Similarly, there is no single word for uncles, aunts, or cousins.” [Dawson 78:140]
• “Furthermore, there are gradations [in Chinese words for siblings] even among children born to the same parents… In Chinese, however, they are divided into four kinds by age—namely, hsiung (elder brother), ti (younger brother), tzu (elder sister), and mei (younger sister).” [Nakamura 64:265-6]
• “The filial piety and obedience inculcated in family life were the training ground for loyalty to the ruler and obedience to constituted authority in the state.
This function of the family to raise filial sons who would become loyal subjects can be seen by a glance at the pattern of authority within the traditional family group. The father was a supreme autocrat, with control over the use of all family property and income and a decisive voice in arranging the marriages of the children. The mixed love, fear, and awe of children for their father was strengthened by the great respect paid to age. An old man’s loss of vigor was more than offset by his growth in wisdom. As long as he lived in possession of his faculties the patriarch possessed every sanction to enable him to dominate the family scene. According to the law he could sell his children into slavery or even execute them for improper conduct…
The domination of age over youth within the old-style family was matched by the domination of male over female. Chinese baby girls in the old days were more likely than baby boys to suffer infanticide. A girl’s marriage was, of course, arranged and not for love. The trembling bride became at once a daughter-in-law under the tyranny of her husband’s mother. In a well-to-do family she might see secondary wives or concubines brought into the household, particularly if she did not bear a male heir. She could be repudiated by her husband for various reasons. If he died she could not easily re-marry. All this reflected the fact that a woman had no economic independence. Her labor was absorbed in household tasks and brought her no income. Peasant women were universally illiterate. They had few or no property rights. Until well into the present century their subjection was demonstrated and reinforced by the custom of footbinding…” [Fairbank 76:21-2]
; “Status within the family was codified in the famous “three bonds” emphasized by Confucian philosophers; namely, the bond of loyalty on the part of subject to ruler (minister to prince), of filial obedience on the part of son to father (children to parents), and chastity on the part of wives but not of husbands.” [23]
; “Within the extended family every child from birth was involved in a highly ordered system of kinship relations with elder brothers, sisters, maternal elder brother’s wives, and other kinds of aunts, uncles, and cousins, grandparents, and in-laws too numerous for a Westerner to keep in mind. These relationships were not only more clearly named and differentiated than in the West but also carried with them more compelling rights and duties dependent upon status. A first son, for example, could not long remain unaware of the Confucian teaching as to his duties toward the family line and his precedence over his younger brothers and his sisters.” [23-4]
3. • See the citations in the previous note.
• “According to Confucian thought, however, marriage is none other than the wife serving her husband.” [Nakamura 64:262]
• “Women’s inferior position in traditional Chinese society was not simply a matter of custom but a deep-rooted belief about the nature of the universal order; for in the dualism of Yin and Yang males were ranged on the side of Yang, brightness and warmth, and women on the side of Yin, darkness and cold. In the popular literature a female character might say that in her previous existence she had been a man but to punish her for her misdeeds in that life she had been reborn a woman. The character for woman was originally composed of elements illustrating a female and a broom, symbolizing her domestic role, and in ancient literary sources even the wives of princes are shown doing menial tasks… [A] woman could never be the head of a household, and was only delegated to run the domestic side by her husband. Her subordinate position is demonstrated not only by the nature of marriage and divorce and concubinage but also by her lack of opportunity to prepare herself for any other role or career than the domestic, and her enforced seclusion and inability to move freely in society, which was a feature of Chinese manners from the Sung period onwards.” [Dawson 78:147]
; “The virtuous young woman of Chinese literature must also display all the ideal patterns of behavior which derive from her role in the family. Obedience both to husband and parents-in-law and fidelity even in the face of shameless ill-treatment are prominent features of such a personality… [Examples]… Unthinking and uncomplaining devotion to duty is part of the feminine ideal.” [269-70]
; “[Concubinage] was perfectly acceptable in the eyes of society… and indeed for a man to have several concubines was not disreputable sign that he had reached a certain position in life which might be represented in present-day Western society by the possession of more than one house or car… [Concubines had very low status under law and] were generally bought from poor families and even from the ranks of prostitutes…” [145-6]
; “Prostitution was accepted by traditional Chinese society, and until this practice was stamped out by the present regime, houses of prostitution were used by officials and merchants as places where they could entertain their colleagues, and poets drew inspiration from them… Prostitutes were usually recruited by purchase from the families of the poor, but often in the literary version a girl of respectable family trained at a very early age in all the desirable arts is forced into prostitution by the loss of her parents or some other disaster.” [146]
• See the note below on daughter-in-laws.
4. • See the [Dawson 78:140] citation, above.
; “Within the family it was often the custom for the children of several brothers to be numbered in accordance with their ages, regardless of the seniority of their fathers…e.g. Third Brother.” [139]
• “Wife and concubines were formally ranked in order of their entry into the household, although different informal rankings readily developed among these cowives on the basis of sexual attractiveness, wealth and family background, success in bearing sons, and the like. A serving woman who bore a child recognized as her master’s might be elevated to the status of concubine with virtually no ritual to mark her passage. The higher status gave her child rights of inheritance.” [Engelen 05:308]
5. • “Until recently a Chinese boy and girl did not choose each other as life mates, nor did they set up an independent household together after marriage. Instead, they entered the husband’s father’s household and assumed responsibilities for its maintenance, subordinating married life to family life in a way that modern Americans would consider insupportable.” [Fairbank 76:24-5]
• “By contrast, in China, marriage was a contract not between two individuals, but between two families; “marriage is a bond between two surnames”, a family matter, by the family, for the family (Eastman, 1988, p.24). In China, even today, the principle of lineage plays a dominant role in all parts of society. Chinese girls usually met their husbands for the first time on their wedding day, even though they were groomed from birth for marriage; the marriage partners were chosen by their families, with a matchmaker making the arrangements (Maynes and Waltner, 2001). ” [Zanden 09a:108]
• “The contrast with China [of Europeans’ marital freedom] is evident in every aspect of family life. It was not until the 1930s in Taiwan and the 1950s in China that young people gained any say whatsoever in the matter of their own marriage. Before that these decisions were entirely a matter of parental discretion. “Under the law of T’ang, Sung, Ming, and Ch’ing, a man, even though he was an adult, held an official position, ran a business far from home, did not have the right to marry without his parents’ consent.” An engagement undertaken without their consent was void, and the punishment for persisting was 80 to 100 blows of the heavy bamboo.” [Engelen 05:222-3]
; “All these and many other [marital] arrangements were possible, but whatever the arrangements were, they were made by the couple’s parents. It was the parents who decided where the couple was to live, where the children were to take their descent, and when the bride was to leave her natal home. No man or woman had the right to arrange his or her own marriage.” [285]
; “The right to give a girl in marriage was transferable (although never her own), and might be contracted to an employer along with her labor power… While all women (perhaps excepting the very rich) were expected to work as part of the marital bargain, those of lower-status were less able to defend themselves against truly egregious labor demands. The “little daughter-in-law” (sim-pua) in a Taiwanese minor marriage was proverbially harshly treated, underfed, and worked harder than a daughter or major-married daughter-in-law. The commodification of persons was widespread in late imperial China.” [308]
6. • “Even after one has married, the obligations continue. Article 15 of China’s family law asserts that: ‘Children have the duty to support and assist their parents. When children fail to perform the duty of supporting their parents, their parents have the right to demand that they pay for their support.'” [Bond 91:6]
7. • “Breaches of filial piety which amounted to crimes against the parent were treated much more seriously by the law than crimes when committed against a non-parent, and for scolding or striking a parent a man could even be sentenced to death. The character for father, in its most ancient form, seems to show a hand holding a stick. Traditionally a stern disciplinarian, he was entitled to beat his sons unmercifully even after they were grown up and married, and there are recorded cases of officials being beaten by their sires.” [Dawson 78:140]
; “In fact the Confucian family ethic influenced the law in a variety of ways. The father’s role was so dominant that not only could he beat his sons unmercifully, but he could also have them flogged by the court on charges of disobedience brought by him.” [163]
• Chinese parents could appeal to local Mandarins to exact severe punishment on disobediant offspring; “Chinese parents could “cast their disobedient children into a public prison. Prisoners of this class [were] commonly bound in chains to large stones, and exposed daily, together with other offenders, at the principal gates of the prison.”” [Engelen 05:220-2]
• “Filial disobedience was the most heinous crime. A son who merely struck his parent could be decapitated where a parent who beat his son to death, if provoked by the son’s disobedience, would deserve only 100 blows (by custom “100” was normally 40 blows) of the heavy bamboo and might be let off entirely… A young man’s scolding his paternal uncle was more heavily punished than his scolding the grandson of his great grandfather’s brother… Contributing to the death of one’s parent was a capital offense even when quite unintended. [Reviews an example of a son who accidentally killed his father while trying to protect him, whose sentence was ‘mercifully’ reduced from dismemberment to beheading.]” [Fairbank 76:121-2]
8. • “More remarkable is the further provision, known from Han times onward, that a son who brings an accusation of parental wrongdoing before the authorities is thereby deemed to be unfilial and hence subject to heavy punishment. Under the Ch’ing Code of 1740, for example, a son’s accusation, if false, was punished by strangulation; even if true, it brought to the son three years of penal service plus one hundred blows of the heavy stick. “Probably China is the world’s only country where a true reporting of a crime to the authorities could entail legal punishment for the reporter.”” [Bodde 91:196]
9. • “The heads of banner families were agents of the state and therefore able to take full advantage of the law that a Chinese son could not separate from his parents against their wishes.” [Engelen 05:224]
10. • “A girl’s marriage was, of course, arranged and not for love. The trembling bride became at once a daughter-in-law under the tyranny of her husband’s mother.” [Fairbank 76:22]
• “[Chinese culture] says to the female: To be attractive to men is unnatural. . .Your main duty is toward your parents-in-law…” [Bodde 91:275]
• “The rites of marriage symbolized the fact that the bride’s body, fertility, domestic service, and loyalty had been handed over by one family to another.” [Dawson 78:143]
; “An additional expense was the gifts to the bride’s family, the betrothal presents, which were a thinly disguised price for the person of the daughter-in-law and a clear indication of her total subservience to her new family.” [144]
• “In recounting his experience as a missionary in northern Taiwan in the 1880’s the Rev. George MacKay noted that “the most common method” of obtaining a wife for one’s son was “to purchase a young girl and bring her up in (your) home.” The other method was to wait until your son was a young adult and then betroth him to a teenage girl. These are what are now generally called the “minor” and “major” forms of marriage. The essential difference between them was the age at which the bride entered her husband’s family. The bride in minor marriages was usually a small child and commonly an infant…” [Engelen 05:272-3]
• “The new wife among all except the wealthiest classes is made the drudge of all work, and is in fact the slave of the whole household. The household is her husband’s clan, of course, with anywhere from thirty to a hundred inmates. It is still regarded as the height of impiety for a newly married couple in China to set up a separate housekeeping establishment.” [Townsend 33:106]
• “The woes of daughters-in-law in China should form the subject rather for a chapter than for a brief paragraph. When it is remembered that all Chinese women marry, and generally marry young, being for a considerable part of their lives under the absolute control of a mother-in-law, some faint conception may be gained of the intolerable miseries of those daughters-in-law who live in families where they are abused. Parents can do absolutely nothing to protect their married daughters, other than remonstrating with the families into which they have married, and exacting an expensive funeral if the daughters should be actually driven to suicide. If a husband should seriously injure or even kill his wife, he might escape all legal consequences by representing that she was “unfilial” to his parents. Suicides of young wives are, we must repeat, excessively frequent, and in some regions scarcely a group of villages can be found where they have not recently taken place. What can be more pitiful than a mother’s reproaches to a married daughter who has attempted suicide and been rescued: “Why didn’t you die when you had a chance?”” [Smith 94:201-2]
11. • See the [Engelen 05:222-3] citation, above.
12. • “[W]hat forced the Chinese population into wretchedness was parental authority and ultimately the state that sponsored that authority. The patriarchs who governed the families of China married their sons and daughters as early as possible regardless of the consequences because they viewed their offspring as resources to be deployed for their benefit. Westerners usually miss what is meant when Chinese people tell them that “in China people do not ask how much money you have. They ask how many sons and grandsons you have.” What is meant is that in China sons and grandsons are like money and have the same uses. ” [Engelen 05:225-6]
; “Parents were mandated by the state to legitimate the residence and marriage of their children, and to allocate their labor as they saw fit. In principle and generally in fact, women remained under the authority of father, husband, or son throughout life; sons remained under their parents’ authority until both died. As a growing body of research makes plain, the state took an active interest in these matters, strongly supporting parental rights.” [306]
; “The commodification of persons was widespread in late imperial China… When a family allocated a girl’s labor power, they preferred to transfer her as a total person—a kinswoman, or at least a contractual dependent— rather than to risk separating her labor power from her other human attributes… Chinese boys were hired out more often than their sisters, when possible on contracts for a year’s work, renewable at the next lunar new year. Some boys succeeded in expanding family resources to the point where their own marriages and children could be supported. Others failed…” [308-9]
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C. Chinese families have collective responsibilities.
Traditional Chinese families are generally treated and taxed as a unit by the state [1]. Families are sometimes punished as a whole, and members are sometimes substitutable for punishment [2]. Successful Chinese individuals, even if having left the home, are required to share property, income, and employment with ‘less fortunate’ members of the family—nepotism is prevalent [3]. This means that a successful man may be deluged with relatives, and may try to conceal any wealth [4]. Upon a death, periods of mourning and attendance of shrines are exactingly prescribed according to one’s degree of relationship with the deceased [5]. Punishments for crimes within families were regulated according to these same degrees of relationship [6]. Notwithstanding all these bonds, Chinese families are not always cozy affairs. There is a reason for all those strict regulatory laws. Chinese families are often fractious and abusive, failing to keep their obligations except when pressed, as you might expect of people forced to live together, to submit and to yield to others [7].
1. • “The [Chinese] family has been regarded not only as the basis of the moral order, but also as the fundamental unit in the political order; so that taxation, ownership of property, and maintenance of law and order have tended to be family rather than individual responsibilities. Often, too, the family has functioned as the basic economic unit: peasant families tilled the soil together, and craftsmen and shopkeepers ran small family businesses.” [Dawson 78:137]
; “Although the close-knit family group was a source of strength to its members, it was also a convenient unit in the government’s system of control. Taxes were demanded of families rather than individuals, and this followed naturally from the fact that ownership was a family rather than an individual matter.” [140]
• “The Chinese family has been a microcosm, the state in miniature. The family, not the individual, was formerly the social unit and the responsible element in the political life of its locality.” [Fairbank 76:21]
2. • “The Legalists were also responsible for inventing the system of mutual responsiblity, which in later stages became an important method of social control. In the words of Ssu-ma Ch’ien, the state of Ch’in introduced legislation ‘that the people be organized into groups of families, which should be mutually responsible for each other’s good behavior and share each other’s punishments.'” [Dawson 78:114]
; “In criminal matters too there was a long tradition of mutual responsiblity inspired by the Legalist philosophy; so that, especially in antiquity, but also in the late imperial period, whole families were wiped out for the serious political crimes of one of their members.” [140]
; “Sometimes a criminal was pardoned or had his sentence reduced if his son, grandson, or younger brother volenteered to be punished in his place. For a period such substitution even became compulsory in the case of criminals who were over eighty or were seriously ill.” [163]
• “Another [Chinese law enforcement] device was to take one member of a family for punishment if the truly guilty could not be found. This took advantage of the Chinese clan and family obligation tradition very neatly, and probably millions of crimes were prevented by it. Life was cheap, and why not a father or brother if the culprit escaped? In really heinous offenses, such as insurrection, all the first of kin and even second of kin might be executed or tortured to death along with the guilty man.” [Townsend 33:109-10]
• “That aspect of the Chinese doctrine of responsibility which is the most repellent to Western standards of thought, is found in the Oriental practice of extinguishing an entire family for the crime of one of its members. Many instances of this sort were reported in connection with the T’aip’ing rebellion, and more recently the family of the chieftain Yakub Beg, who led the Mohammedan rebellion in Turkestan, furnished another. These atrocities are not, however, limited to cases of overt rebellion. In the year 1873 “a Chinese was accused and convicted of having broken open the grave of a relative of the Imperial family, in order to rob the coflin of certain gold, silver, and jade ornaments which had been buried in it. The entire family of the criminal, consisting of four generations, from a man more than ninety years of age to a female infant only a few months old, was exterminated. Thus eleven persons suffered death for the offence of one. And there was no evidence to show that any of them were parties to, or were even aware of, his crime.”” [Smith 94:234-5]
3. • “Even after one has married, the obligations continue. Article 15 of China’s family law asserts that: ‘Children have the duty to support and assist their parents. When children fail to perform the duty of supporting their parents, their parents have the right to demand that they pay for their support.’ This cardinal relationship extends past death, with the tradition of maintaining family shrines to the departed and two major grave-tending holidays every year. Such relationships of mutual succour are not confined to parents and children. Aunts, uncles, elder brothers, and elder sisters are expected to contribute their finances, their dwelling space, their good offices to their junior charges whenever the need arises.” [Bond 91:6]
• “Nepotism supported the squeeze or “leakage” system by giving an added sanction for personal arrangements contrary to the public interest. Even classic texts extolled duty to family, and particularly filial piety, as superior to any duty to the state. Thus the interest of the imperial administration at the capital… was constantly in conflict with the multifarious private interests of all the officials, each of whom had to provide for his relatives…” [Fairbank 76:116]
• “The Chinese clan system is responsible for a vast number of worthless government employees. An official of standing is expected to fill openings with relatives, and if no openings exist, to create them. The hordes of cousins and nephews must be satisfied, irrespective of any claims of ability. But this is only one of the many curses of the system.” [Townsend 33:119] See also the Townsend citations below.
• “The Chinese are not shy about their connections. On the contrary, they’re usually proud that they know people in power. One negative consequence is nepotism, which continues to be rampant in China. Pervading all aspects of business and government, many jobs filled based on family ties, not merit—undermining a system based on merit and scholarship.”
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4. • “It has been mentioned that Chinese families tend to live in family herds, each household often a miniature village in itself, with parents, grandparents, children, uncles and cousins all under one roof or under adjoining roofs. Where for business reasons one member moves to another residence, the allegiance still holds. If he prospers, he is expected to share his earnings – or his proceeds from banditry or whatever else his occupation may be – with less fortunate members of the clan. The tradition of family obligation is so strong that very few Chinese care to resist it. The whole theory of self respect for an individual is based upon this system. Many present-day Chinese realize the mischief of it. But these are the fortunate ones financially and they are outnumbered by the unfortunates. If a lucky individual makes money and refuses to divide it with his relatives, though they may be shiftless and good for nothing and unwilling to work if they get a chance, public opinion supports the impecunious and perhaps undeserving relatives in their demands upon him. Vast numbers of profligate gamblers, opium smoking wastrels and lazy roues live in pleasant idleness by their levies upon more industrious uncles or cousins.
And what if the sorely-tried industrious member of the family decides to call a halt and shut his wallet? Immediately the rest of the clan rise up and denounce him to the community. A favorite expedient is to pack mats and blankets forthwith to his gate, by which the whole drove of outraged relatives will camp and shout to passers-by their version of the affair, heaping abuse upon the delinquent…
Not only do impecunious relatives demand cash assistance as a right, but exercise at will the traditional right of coming with bag and baggage and droves of children to spend as long a time as they please at the home of one who has made money. A fortunate Chinese may expect a flock of poor relations to bring their pots and baskets and mats and camp on his premises as they please. One individual who had prospered took a house near one I occupied myself (though prior to my day there) and set out to live “foreign style.” He was immediately set upon in the traditional manner by a horde of rustic relatives. His rice bill grew until he saw no way to meet it nor could he get rid of his unwanted guests. In resignation he abandoned the effort to live in luxury, and returned to a Chinese house and the Chinese outward semblance of impecuniousness.” [Townsend 33:117-8]
5. • “[T]he grades of material and colours of mourning dress, of which there could be as many as a hundred variants representing the different relationships to the deceased, served as a visible reminder of the internal structure of the family. The children of the deceased were naturally expected to weep the most bitter tears, eat the coarsest food, wear the roughest garments, and endure the most protracted period of mourning. Officially this went on for twenty-seven months, which was conventionally described as the three-year mourning period. Members of the civil service had to resign from office, and there was strong sentiment against those statesmen who were granted exemption from this rule on account of their indispensability. The degrees of mourning also had their impact on the law, for punishment for adultery, and for assault and theft involving relations was graded according to a scale which corresponded with the degrees of mourning; and mourning charts were consequently included in the Ming and Ch’ing dynasty law codes.” [Dawson 78:152-3]
• “Within the family, offenses were precisely measured in terms of the five degrees of mourning. This system, originating in the classical ritualistic literature, specified that each member of a family should mourn the death of any other member for a period of time and wearing a kind of mourning garb that differed according to the closeness of relationship… Legal penalties were fixed accordingly: a wife who struck her husband would, under the Ch’ing Code, receive a minimum punishment of one hundred blows of the heavy bamboo, whereas a husband who struck his wife would receive no punishment at all unless he inflicted significant injury and she lodged a formal complaint with the authorities, in which case he would be liable to eighty blows of the heavy bamboo.” [Bod 198]
6. • See the previous sources.
7. • “The foregoing summary [of Chinese familial obligations] is, of course, an ideal. In Chinese culture there is neglect and abuse of children, divorce, alienation of sons from fathers, dereliction of duty by gambling parents, abandonment of grandparents, and so forth… Many Chinese learn early to ‘swallow anger’ and to tolerate the intolerable because they do not see how they can live outside their family of origin or marriage.” [Bond 91:6-7]
• “The clan system explains why more Chinese do not starve. As long as one has a relative a shade better off than himself, he can expect a division. This division is not made with a show of loving kindness. It is often hard fought for, and gained only after the more prosperous of the two has tried in vain to show that he has nothing to share, and is finally threatened with the dread picketing, an extremity developing only now and then in the case of unusually resistant persons.” [Townsend 33:119]
• “The whole family life of the Chinese illustrates their lack of sympathy. While there are great differences in different households, and while from the nature of the case generalisation is precarious, it is easy to see that most Chinese homes which are seen at all are by no means happy homes. It is impossible that they should be so, for they are deficient in that unity of feeling which to us seems so essential to real home life. A Chinese family is generally an association of individuals who are indissolubly tied together, having many of their interests the same, and many of them very different. The result is not our idea of a home, and it is not sympathy.” [Smith 94:199]
; “At the Missionary Conference held in Shanghai in the year 1877, a paper was read by Dr. Yates on “Ancestral Worship,” in which he embodied the results of his thirty years’ experience in China… [T]he author, after speaking of ancestral worship considered merely as a manifestation of filial piety, continues: “The term ‘filial’ is misleading, and we should guard against being deceived by it. Of all the people of whom we have any knowledge, the sons of the Chinese are most unfilial, disobedient to parents, and pertinacious in having their own way from the time they are able to make known their wants.” Dr. Legge, the distinguished translator of the Chinese Classics, who retired from China after thirty-three years’ experience, has quoted this passage from Dr. Yates, for the purpose of most emphatically dissenting from it, declaring that his experience of the Chinese has been totally different. This merely illustrates the familiar truth that there is room for honest difference of opinion…” [172]
; “The lot of Chinese concubines is one of exceeding bitterness. The homes in which they are to be found — happily relatively few in number — are the scenes of incessant bickerings and open warfare. “The magistrate of the city in which I live,” writes a resident of China of long experience, “was a wealthy man, a great scholar, a doctor of literature, an able administrator, well acquainted with the good teachings of the Classics; but he would lie and curse and rob, and torture people to any extent to gratify his evil passions. One of his concubines ran away; she was captured, brought back, stripped, hung up to a beam by her feet, and cruelly and severely beaten.”” [202]
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II-8. White governments are representative cooperations; Chinese governments are despotisms.
Introduction.
Chinese rulers are more despotic and less compassionate toward subjects than are White rulers. White citizens have more local autonomy, more representation in government, and more rights. Chinese government exerts wider control over economic, educational and religious activities, but often merely to restrict them. White government, being more embedded within its nation, is stronger and more effective in managing these activities. Chinese rule is more arbitrary and self-serving, while White rule is more grounded in law and dutiful.
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A. White citizens are more independent.
White leaders throughout history have been more independent of central authority than Chinese leaders, more constrained by law toward their subordinates and subjects [1], and more subject to the approval of legislative bodies representing their citizenry [2]. Early Germanic tribes were organized into voluntary ‘brotherhoods’ with an elected leader [3]. Feudal fealty between Whites was a contract of mutual duties, which each had a right to nullify if the other proved unfaithful [4]; while Chinese feudal fealty was absolute [5]. Many European regions split apart completely into separate nations, while China merged into a single megastate ruled by an emperor. White nobles, clergy [6], and towns retained a degree of autonomy and rights [7], their leaders meeting in representative bodies that gradually evolved into modern parliaments. China has no such tradition [8]. White citizens have rights to elect representatives, to voice their political views, to practice their religion, to be secure in their property, and to not be arrested and punished without due process. Chinese have no such rights [9].
1. • “[A] strong belief in the rule of law developed [in Europe about 1100], which applied in principle to all, the prince as well as his subjects. Underlying this idea of the rule of law was the idea of equality before the law, although in practice this was mitigated by the socio-economic inequality of the period: a knight would often be treated very differently from a peasant. A second important aspect was the coexistence of a great many different subsystems: canon law (governing the Church and its believers), urban law (governing the city and its inhabitants), feudal law (governing relations between the king and his vassals) and manorial law (governing relations between the lord of the manor and his serfs or free peasants)…
Moreover, following a trend set by the monasteries in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the written word itself acquired a special significance. Laws were only valid if written down, and written evidence acquired a privileged position in court proceedings that was deemed superior to oral testimony based on memory. For the subjects of kings it meant that royal power could be restricted by the written word. First, the kings and nobles themselves began to hire clerics (literate men from the monasteries) to issue charters and define their rights and claims. But their subjects soon followed their ruler’s example: they understood that they could protect themselves against royal predation by rights that were written down in city charters or in royal charters such as the Magna Carta, which were all the result of negotiations between subjects and their princes. This strong emphasis on the written word in itself severely limited the power of the sovereign, because ‘real’, unrestricted power is the power to do whatever the ruler wishes, unrestrained by any code. Moreover, power that has been defined in such a way, by writing down what its limits are, is in itself restrained or constrained, and in a sense constitutionalized.” [Zanden 09a:47-8]
; “We have already seen how this movement, which started with the issuing of charters by and for monasteries in the eighth and ninth centuries (as proof of the acquisition of certain properties), began to spread to other spheres and formed a crucial element in the ‘silent revolution’ of 1050–1300: written charters issued by emperor and king became the constitutions of cities, statutes issued by city governments defined the rights and duties of guilds and fraternities, as did charters such as the Magna Carta between monarchy and nobility. It was this cumulative growth of the use of the written word… that was unique in Europe.” [63]
; “The core of an efficient set of institutions is therefore that counterbalances are created against the ‘natural’ inclination of the wealthy and the powerful to use this power for their own purposes – at the expense of those without power. This requires the ‘right’ legal ideas, and the ‘right’ (legal) practices. These legal ideas were supplied by the legal revolution of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which established, at least in principle, the ‘rule of law’, and created the basis of the Western European legal tradition… [The superiority of written law] became widely accepted, in the long run strengthened the position of those who did not carry the sword, and led to the ‘constitutionalization’ of power (and, as an important ‘spin off’, to the gradual increase in literacy in this period). At the same time, perhaps due to the power vacuum of the period, citizens managed to solve some of the problems of collective action, and organized themselves in communes, guilds and other corporate bodies to foster their interests. These corporate bodies were the crucial ‘countervailing power’ within the political economy of Western Europe that managed to protect the interests of the ‘powerless’ against the powerful.” [65-6]
; “The following features characterized the new legal ‘system’ that emerged in the Latin West. First, there was strong belief in the rule of law, which applied in principle to all, to the prince as much as to his subjects. Underlying this idea of the rule of law was a strong sense of equality at law, although in practice this was mitigated by the socioeconomic inequality of the period, so that a knight would indeed often be treated differently from a peasant. A second important feature was that there existed a large number of different sub-systems: canon law (governing the Church and its believers), urban law (governing the city and its inhabitants), feudal law (governing the relations between the king and his vassals), manorial law (governing the relations between the lord of the manor and his serfs or free peasants). These coexisted with national law traditions, often based on customary law, but increasingly influenced by Roman law and conscious attempts to engineer legal traditions…
For the subjects of kings, this meant that royal power could, in principle, be restricted by the written word. First, kings and courts themselves began to hire clerics, in particular literate men from the monasteries, to issue charters and define the rights and claims of the elite. The subjects followed soon: they understood that they could safeguard themselves against royal predation by having rights that were written down in city charters, or in royal charters such as the Magna Carta, the result of negotiations between subjects and their princes.” [Zanden 08:17-8]
• “Britain’s capitalistic oligarchy operated within a vibrant civil society that guaranteed far more rights to its citizens than any other state at the time excepting the Dutch, with their rights of personal liberty, rights of contract, a more effecient financial system, a more transparent and trustworthy legal system, and a truly professional class of civil servants… In 19th century China one still finds a class of civil servants educated in ancient literary works and largely preoccupied with preserving the traditional order adhering to an ethic of respect, docility, and subordination to elders and political authorities. ” [Duchesne 11a:226]
2. • “It was with a strong traditional sense of their primordial liberty that nobilities throughout Europe imposed upon kings such famous documents of “right of resistance” or “constitutional” charters as the Magna Carta of 1215, the Hungarian Golden Bull of 1222, the Assizes of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the Privilege of the Brandenburg nobles, the Aragonese Act of Union of 1287, and the Pact of Koszyce of Poland in 1374. Notwithstanding the differences between these charters and acts, reflecting varying times and places, their underlying theme was the principle of mixed sovereignty. This principle recognized the “rights” of both the king and his vassals: as the first lord of the realm, the king, had the right to take initiatives, to choose men for appointive offices, to enforce the law, and to protect the territory, but at the same time it was the king’s duty to seek the counsel and consent of his barons…
It was this [aristocratic] principle which laid the groundwork for the development of feudal monarchies into representative or parliamentary governments… The name “parliament” (from the French word parler) was originally used to refer toinstances in which the king met with his feudal advisors to discuss matters of state, but the importance of the evolution of parliament was in how it came to address not just the privileges of barons and knights but of townsmen and prosperous farmers who lacked titles of nobility
but who managed to impose their own will and interests upon feudal society… [These aristocrats were the original inspiration and precedent of] the rise of merchants and the way this class came to acquire corporate privileges for their towns, and how the three “estates” of nobles, clergy, and townsmen came to participate in parliaments where questions of war, justice, and taxation might be raised.” [Duchesne 11a:482-3]
• “Institution building in Europe was driven by the collective actions of citizens who established communes, students and scholars who set up universities, merchants and craftsmen who designed guilds, and peasants (and lords) who created commons. There is an unbroken democratic tradition from the beginning of the communal movement in the eleventh century, via the reign of the Popolo in thirteenth-century Italy, the guild movement emerging in the Low Countries after 1302, the Dutch Revolt of the final third of the sixteenth century, to the English and Glorious Revolutions of the seventeenth century and the French Revolution of 1789.” [Zanden 09a:295-6]
• “Petitioning documents submitted by rich and poor alike were instruments having juridical status. In them, petitioners complained of the “miscarriage of justice or requested relief from taxes, forest laws, and other regulations.” A medieval ritual had been established whereby the first act of convening Parliament was to appoint the receivers and “trier of petitions’. Both individuals and collectives had the right to petition so that by the 1640s, we find 15,000 or more signatories to a single petition presented to Parliament. The view commonly expressed was that petitioning is “the indisputable right of the meanest subject.” Nothing like this practice existed in China or the muslim world for no domains of legal autonomy or parliaments evolved outside of Europe.” [Huff 11:306]
• “Unlike in Western Europe, [in China] there was no tradition of institutionalized bargaining – especially over taxes and warfare – between central government and representatives of various societal groups that were acknowledged as such and could claim rights and privileges.” [Vries 15:414]
3. “The war leaders of the Germanic tribes Caesar observed, for example, were chosen ad hoc by the tribal assemblies for the duration of the military activity, and the chiefs (not “big men”), as Gat refers to them (213), were freely moving warriors who would compete to attract young warriors eager for adventure and individual renown. The relations between the members of the war bands, as Gat recognizes, were “largely egalitarian, ‘brotherhoods’ of ‘fellows’ ”.” [Duchesne 11a:390]
4. • “What was different about feudalism [than the aristocracy of Indo-European tribes] was that it formalized the bond of loyalty between military chiefs and followers. It did so through the performance of an act of homage which took the form of an oath in which a kneeling vassal placed his clasped hands between the hands of the lord and gave his word to be loyal to him. This personal relationship between vassal and lord was as egalitarian as that between tribal chiefs and their followers. The lord reciprocated the vassal’s fealty by swearing to protect him and, as Ganshof points out, the Carolingian lords increasingly granted fiefs to their vassals as a way to solidify their loyalty and provide them with the economic means to acquire armor, weapons and horses…
European vassals enjoyed “rights of immunity” in their own lands. The lords, as Bloch emphasized, were equally required to fulfill their contractually agreed obligations under penalty of losing their rights over vassals. It was a “universally recognized right of the vassal to abandon the bad lord”. There was a “right of resistance” by vassals, even against the king, under the expectation that a “good” king should be held responsible for the performance of his duties to his free aristocratic subjects. This expectation refers back to the Germanic tradition of kingship where kings were expected to succeed in warfare and to show generosity to their followers, lest they lose the loyalty of his tribe.” [Duchesne 11a:466-70]
5. • “[T]he most important feature of Western feudalism is
lacking in China. True, in China as in Europe by receiving their
fiefs from the king the feudal lords became his vassals and owed
him allegiance consisting in military aid, taxes in kind and the
like. But there the comparison ends. For in Europe in exchange
for their allegiance the feudal lords had a claim to protection
by the king, thus making the feudal system look like the product
of a free act of mutual fidelity. Characteristically enough, in
China, or wherever the feudal system emerged in the East, it
remained a one-sided institution leaving the king as the impersonation of all rights but without any obligations.” [Haas 56:84-5]
6. • “[T]he period between 1000 and 1200 saw a “tremendous transformation” in the legal institutions of Western Europe. Out of the Papal Revolution, the great confrontation between church and state in the investiture controversy (ca. 1050–1122), came the idea of the church’s corporate autonomy, its right to exercise legislative, administrative, and judicial powers within its own domain, including the right to levy taxes, in addition to the dominion it already asserted over wide areas of civil and domestic affairs… By analyzing and synthesizing all authoritative statements concerning the nature of law, the various sources of law, and the definitions and relationships between the different kinds of law (divine law, natural law, human law, the law of the church, the law of princes, enacted law, customary law), Ecclesiastical scholars created the intellectual and legal basis for the reconstitution of medieval Europe as a “warren of jurisdictions” (kingdoms, baronies, bishoprics, urban communes, guilds, universities), which in turn resulted in the preconditions and the experience for a civil society where no authority, not even the pope or the king, had complete political, religious, or intellectual jurisdiction.
It was Europe’s organization into legally sanctioned institutions such as cities, universities, and monasteries that set it apart. Members could enjoy a degree of autonomy not tolerated, or legally guaranteed, in more centralized societies such as China, where authority descended from the emperor and his officials down. ” [Duchesne 11a:275-6]
• “One may surmise that the real significance of the religious and intellectual persecution in the West was not so much its intensity and persistence per say, but rather the situation implied by these characteristics: the fact that the persecutors often held less than total power over the persecuted, that the latter were often willing to die if necessary rather than submit, and that the issues at stake were felt on both sides to be sufficently vital to justify the struggle…
In short, viewing the situation in Reformation Europe in the light of the Chinese experience, one may conclude that the greater intensity of its persecutions, coupled with the greater resistance these provoked, far from pointing to the totality and effectiveness of thought control, indicates a healthy intellectual diversity and vigor.” [Bodde 91:189-90]
• “[W]hereas commentators have sometimes spoken of harsh treatment of the [Protestant Reformation] reformers, in fact, their books and ideas soon triumphed across Europe… Conversely, the intellectually oppressive conditions in China gave birth to no new major religious or philosophical movements… The radically different approach to dissent in China and its fierce repression of “heterodox views” has been extensively written about… [Gives a long list of sources].” [Huff 11:308+note25]
7. • “The contest for power in European societies (note the plural) also gave rise to the specifically European phenomenon of the semi-autonomous city, organized and known as commune. Cities of course were to be found around the world… But nothing like the commune appeared outside western Europe. The essence of the commune lay, first, in its economic function: these units were “governments of the merchants, by the merchants, and for the merchants”; and second, in its exceptional civil power: its ability to confer social status and political rights on its residents—rights crucial to the conduct of business and to freedom from outside interference.” [Landes 98:36-7]
• “Communes were ‘personal, sworn associations’ of the inhabitants of a town, who in this way became true ‘citizens’, to defend and strengthen the rights of the town. Councils and parliaments were an integral part of the organization of the commune, which showed ‘quite a high degree of participation in the making of decisions’. By the middle of the twelfth century, almost all cities in northern Italy were governed by more-or-less independent communes… A second, more-or-less independent centre of the communal movement was northern France and neighbouring Flanders. From the 1070s onwards, starting in Le Mans (1070) and Cambrai (1077), the communal movement began to spread to a large number of large (and small) cities in north-western Europe…
There are close links between the model of the ‘commune’ and that of the ‘guild’. Sometimes merchants guilds preceded the establishment of a commune, and sometimes guilds were set up after some measure of self-government of the city was realized… In England, where the communal movement was less strong, owing to the greater power of the monarch, merchant guilds may to some extent have been a substitute for the growth of communal power.” [Zanden 08:18-20]
• “Not since the Imperium Romanum did Europe’s core become one empire again. The continent continued to be an extremely competitive system. But it was not only characterised by competition between states. The ‘parcellisation’ of sovereignty not only existed at the highest level. As Michael Mann nicely puts it, in Western Europe in those regions with a legacy of feudalism, none of the sources of social power (political, ideological, economical and militarily) was ever again monopolised by a state that was not in some way ‘institutionally’ checked during the Middle Ages and the early modern period. Rulers in Western Europe always had to bargain with subjects. All this bargaining ultimately led to the emergence of Western nations, in which “all four sources of social power [were] entwined”, a circumstance that provided them with their enormous power. Competition existed not only between states but also within states. This allowed subjects to have exit and voice and obtain all sorts of liberties, privileges and thus protection that in the end also depended from the state.” [Vries 13:380]
• See the [Bekar 02:13-4] citation in section II-8.C, below.
• “One other uniqueness of the West is the role that Parliaments played in its history: indeed so unique has this role been that German historians have considered the Standestaat, the representation of the three functional estates, Church, Noble and Burgher, to be a particular stage in world history.
The Standestaat was a type of political structure called the “state of estates”, which amounted to a partition of powers in which feudal lords, the church, and towns, recognized the monarch as the legitimate head of the state at the same time that each retained a specific set of rights and duties. In China, India, and Islam, in general, there were no countervailing powers because there was no substantial distinction between the state and civil society; there was no aristocracy with special rights, no separation of religious and secular powers, no independent cities, and no parliaments where relations between the various estates of society were open for adjudication. It was in reference to the absence of a civil society that the category “oriental despotism” was used by Montesquieu, Marx, Weber, and Karl Wittfogel… [S]uffice it to say now that, as centralized administrations evolved through the modern era, and the old feudal elites saw their privileges curtailed, consensual-liberal rights and limits were nevertheless elicited gradually from the emerging nation-states by aristocrats, town dwellers, lawyers, and commercial elites, albeit not peacefully but through a dynamic succession of conflicts that culminated in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the French Revolution of 1789.” [Duc4 227-8]
8. • Chinese feality was absolute (above), Chinese nobles were fully at the mercy of the emperor (section II-8.B), and the examination system to admit officials was created in part to limit their power (section II-8.C)
• On the lack of independence of Chinese religions, see section II-8.C and its sources.
• “Max Weber has said the following: “In China, there had never been formed any citizens’ defensive and political organization. Cities in [feudal] China did not have the characteristics of a religious service (monastic) organization or of a sworn constitutional government as in the West… Cities, the fortresses of the Imperial Government had, in fact, less guaranty of self-government than the village communities. Cities were permitted to have neither the right to conclude a contract nor a jurisdiction, so that they were unable to take united action.”… He added: “Cities in China were not administrative in character, and they had no administrative privilege as seen in the polis in Greece or modern cities in the West.”” [Nakamura 64:213]
; See the [Nakamura 64:214] citation, below.
9. • See the [Duchesne 11a:226] citation, above.
• “[I]t is important to recognize that European societies were held together by a very different conception of law and legal structure, one that sometimes clashed with the perceptions of the other civilizations, for the idea of positive law enacted by an elected body of citizens had not emerged outside Europe. This was true even though the European legal system was itself in a constant state of reform and renewal. That idea of deliberately planned legal reform, with due consideration of the rights of many participants, citizens, professionals, and nobles, was quite different from the legal views prevailing in the Ottoman Empire, China, and Mughal India.” [Huff 11:5]
• “When [Confucianism] talks about the individual, it is concerned with the person’s social responsibilities, not his or her individual rights. Indeed, the word “rights” has no real semantic equivalent in Literary Chinese.” [Bodde 91:200]
• “In China, private property rights were established, but rights of freedom guaranteed by law did not exist. It is natural, therefore, that free thinking was not encouraged, and conservative thought and respect for the past were dominant; cities did not develop as independent communities, the right to personal freedom was not recognized…” [Nakamura 64:214]
• “Although private ownership had been in place in China for over two thousand years, constraints on the emperor were minimal… [I]n practice, [moderate taxation] depends on the virtue and ability of the sitting emperor. If the emperor indulged in luxurious consumption or grand projects to satisfy his ego, or if the emperor was too young or too weak such that the political power was lost to eunuchs or royal relatives who did not care about the dynasty’s long term interest, then the protection of property rights became precarious. Although there had been wise and capable emperors in Chinese history, more often emperors were mediocre, oppressive or violent, and it was not uncommon that the central power was controlled by eunuchs or royal relatives. There was no institutional safeguard against tyrants. The dynastic life cycle further weakened the protection of property rights…” [Chen 12:49]
; “To summarise, it was not uncommon for arbitrary violations of ICPR [industrial and commercial property rights] to happen in historical China in the past millennium. The real tax rates faced by industrialists and merchants appeared to be not only high, but also unpredictable, arbitrary and progressive. The social status of merchants (shang) was consistently below that of gentry (shi), peasantry (nong), and artisanate (gong). Discriminating policies against merchants were routinely adopted as early as the Warring States Period (475-221 BCE). As a politically disadvantaged group, merchants’ property rights did not receive proper protection. Living in an insecure environment, merchants strove to make a profit in good times, yet often chose to hide wealth and keep a low profile rather than expanding their businesses, being conscious about the risk of expropriation.” [58]
• “The fundamentally penal nature of the Chinese legal codes was not amenable to dispute resolution of commercial and civil nature. However, the county magistrates, the lowest level bureaucrat did handle and rule on legal disputes that did not entail any corporal punishment. It has been shown now that a vast number of civil and commercial cases were actually brought to and settled at the court of the county magistrates. But… these county-level trials were something more akin to a process of ‘didactic conciliation’… The decisions of the magistrates were not legal ‘adjudication’ as in the Western legal order. They invoked general ethical, social or legal norms as their legal basis without the citation of legal codes or customs, formal or informal. These rulings, in accordance with the intermediation nature, required the written consent of the litigants. The administrative and ‘intermediation’ nature of the legal system on civil matters is consistent with the absence of a formal civil and commercial code and a missing professional legal class.” [Gupta 10:15-6]
• “To begin with there is the unmistakable fact that in Qing China there was less financial and legal sophistication than in early modern Britain. Especially when it comes to what one may call ‘the interface of market and government’. In the eighteenth century it did not have a national bank, a consolidated national debt and formal and refined property laws. During the economic Ancien Régime that was not a real problem.” [Vries 03:29-30]
• “Of course, no reimbursement is made to the farmers and villages whose property is destroyed or damaged by these few public works. A streetwidening operation cut away a good part of our chief messenger’s house, for example, and thus destroyed much of his life savings. No provision, even in theory, exists for compensating such owners. Public works in China are the dread of the natives where they are contemplated.” [Townsend 33:237]
• “There are still violent land seizures in China, only now cadres usually sell what they confiscate to businessmen looking to build hotels and factories.” [Parfitt 12:170]
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B. Chinese rulers are more despotic.
Before its present totalitarian Communist regime, China was ruled by emperors worshipped as the “Son of Heaven”. Those blessed to be in the presence of the emperor, or even of a letter he had written, kowtowed: they bowed down touching their head to the ground nine times [1]. The elites bathed in luxury while the people languished [2]. The emperor and his officials were not constrained by a constitution and had few written laws they needed to bother about [3]. Criminal laws provided exemptions and lighter punishments for higher ranking personages [4]. Officials governed arbitrarily with a wide range of powers [5], punished dissent as they pleased [6], and seized property and conscripted labor and soldiery as they wished [7]. Chinese people often concealed any wealth, to avoid confiscation [8]. The ruling class installed Confucianism, an ethic of respect and obedience to superiors, as the dominant philosophy [9]. Even Chinese pronouns were made to emphasize rank [10]. Their system of control was so effective at keeping people in line that it lasted for thousands of years.
1. • “The idea of respecting the Emperor is derived from the traditional Chinese esteem for order. In China, this idea was established under the name, “the theory of Heaven’s command,” in which Heaven was believed to have given a mandate to the Emperor. “Heaven (t’ien)” was believed to be the highest of all powers in the universe and to control all other powers.
The power of the Emperor ranked above various divine beings in folk-faith, and his authority was a power given by heaven. It was thought that the duty of the king was to organize a moral system and establish the social order. “Only the Emperor could discuss moral virtues and organize the system of the world” (Chung Yung—The Doctrine of the Mean). Thus, the Emperor was gradually deified, and after the T’ang dynasty (618–906) came to be regarded as the perfect human being… His power was limited by Heaven’s command. According to it, the Emperor’s throne was given to him by the command of Heaven, which the people had to follow.” [Nakamura 64:271]
• “Seated on the dragon throne, the Son of Heaven was too sacred an object to be gazed on by mortal eyes, so a screen must intervene. Westerners who came to China were struck by the awe in which the emperor was held by his people. Macartney, for example, noted how a sight of the emperor’s portrait was sufficient to make people prostrate themselves; and, attending the emperor’s birthday ceremony, he found that the worship and adoration he received on that occasion as he sat behind his screen surpassed any religious ceremony. When conditions permitted, emperors were kept as separate as possible from ordinary mortals. Thus, Macartney noted, the common road from Peking to the summer palace was paralleled by a separate one entirely for use by the sovereign. Receipt of an imperial honour by a high-ranking official miles away from the capital would immediately cause him to turn in the direction of the capital and perform the kowtow.” [Dawson 78:13]
• “Down to the scholar-gentry came the licences and the obligations of prostrating themselves before the imperial messages (symbolizing the dominance relationship and signifying assent to the percentages), of forwarding candidates for examination, and the duty of setting a moral example to the peasants, which last the elite considered to be a valuable contribution on their part.” [Jones 87:209]
• “In China, even when the state did not take, it oversaw, regulated, and repressed. Authority should not have to depend on goodwill, the right attitude, personal virtue. Three hundred years before the Common Era, a Chinese moralist was telling a prince how to rule, not by winning the affection of his subjects but by ensuring their obedience. A prince cannot see and hear everything, so he must turn the entire empire into his eyes and ears. “Though he may live in the deepest retreat of his palace, at the end of tortuous corridors, nothing escapes him, nothing is hidden from him, nothing can escape his vigilant watch.” Such a system depends on the honesty and capacity of the living eyes and ears. The ruler is at the mercy of ambitious subordinates, whose capacity for deception and hypocrisy is unbounded.” [Landes 98:35]
; “The Chinese emperor was the “Son of Heaven,” unique, godlike representative of celestial power. Those few who entered his presence showed their awe by kowtowing—kneeling and touching their head nine times to the ground. Others kowtowed to anything emanating from him—a letter, a single handwritten ideograph. The paper he wrote on, the clothes he wore, everything he touched partook of his divine essence…
[T]he Mandarins’ self-esteem and haughtiness had ample room for expression and exercise on their inferiors, and were matched only by their “stunned submissiveness” and self-abasement to superiors. Nothing conveyed so well their rivalry in humility as the morning audience, when hundreds of courtiers gathered in the open from midnight on and stood about, in rain and cold and fair, to await the emperor’s arrival and perform their obeisance. They were not wasting time; their time was the emperor’s.” [335-6]
; “[Balazs’s] analysis (pp. 22-23) is worth repeating: “[I]f one understands by totalitarianism the complete hold of the State and its executive organs and functionaries over all the activities of social life, without exception, Chinese society was highly totalitarian…. No private initiative, no expression of public life that can escape official control. There is to begin with a whole array of state monopolies, which comprise the great consumption staples: salt, iron, tea, alcohol, foreign trade. There is a monopoly of education, jealously guarded. There is practically a monopoly of letters (I was about to say, of the press): anything written unofficially, that escapes the censorship, has little hope of reaching the public. But the reach of the Moloch-State, the omnipotence of the bureaucracy, goes much farther. There are clothing regulations, a regulation of public and private construction (dimensions of houses); the colors one wears, the music one hears, the festivals—all are regulated. There are rules for birth and rules for death; the providential State watches minutely over every step of its subjects, from cradle to grave. It is a regime of paper work and harassment, endless paper work and endless harassment.”” [Landes 06:7-8]
2. • “Oriental civilizations struck Europeans as monumental and grand. Much of the apparent grandeur was a compound of imposing works of engineering and luxury for the court circles. Mechanical engineering lagged. The standard of living of the mass of the people languished. This condition is most easily accounted for by political mechanisms which devoted tax revenues to massive public works and an easy life for the elite. Overall these societies were not rich in the sense of high average real incomes, the dimension in which Europe was to pass them. Late Manchu China with a population of some 400 million still supported only seven-and-a-half million non-producers, fewer than two percent of the population. This two percent elite however consummed in the 1880s twenty-four percent of the national product. For comparison, Le Roy Ladurie suggests that almost fifteen percent of the forty million people in France, Germany, and Britain at the start of the fourteenth century had already risen above peasant status and were supported by the peasantry…
The distribution of income in Europe was unusually equal, that is to say not equal at all but with a flatter Lorenz curve than obtained in Asia. This was reflected in the sense of dismay with which many early European travellers reported on the depths of poverty among the masses and the heights of prodigality among the rich that they came across in Asia. The splendours of Asian courts, the religious and funerary monuments and hydraulic engineering works, the luxury goods and skilled craftsmanship seemed merely to testify that political organization could squeeze blood out of stones if the stones were numerous enough. ‘Century after century’, writes Harris, the standard of living in China… hovered slightly above or below what might be called the threshold of pauperization’, according to fluctuations in population density…” [Jones 87:3-5]
• “[M]embers of the [Chinese] aristocracy commonly took as many as nine concubines for themselves besides a single wife. By “modern times” (the Former Han period), the nobles had hundreds of consorts, the high officials, tens; and even men of middle rank enjoyed the services of several female attendants. The resulting sexual imbalance meant that many women confined to the households of the rich were forced to lead empty, unfulfilled lives, while many men of common status were doomed to die without ever having a mate.” [Bodde 91:254]
• “The difference between the two groups [the Chinese “ruling class and the ruled”] can also be observed by objective criteria. The officials, together with their family members, had a style of life quite different from that of the commoners, so that they could be clearly marked off from the latter. The style of life was not conditioned economically, as is the situation in modern capitalist society. Instead, it was regulated legally under sumptuary laws. Thus a monopoly over the superior way of life by a privileged group was legitimized. The official class was guaranteed the exclusive enjoyment of it, unthreatened by any propertied class.” [Fairbank 57:245]
3. • ”
The civilized nations of the East knew practically no form of
government other than autocratic monarchy… Nowhere and at no time did the East
produce institutions founded on vested rights, which would have
effectively limited the power of the monarch.” [Haas 56:84-5]
• “As Lin lamented, ‘The most striking charactersistic in our [Chinese] political life as a nation is the absense of a constitution and of the idea of civil rights.’ Instead of rule by law, there was a long tradition of rule by magistrates judgment… So, there is no refuge in the law.” [Bond 91:58]
• “According to Needham, since the transition from the School of Legalists to Confucianism at the very beginning of traditional China, ‘during the period of transition from feudalism to bureaucratism. . .the Chinese early acquired a great distaste for precisely formulated abstracted codified law’.
Chinese autocracy placed absolute and limitless power in the hands of the emperor… There has never been constitutionalism in China.” [Qian 85:115-6]
• “The official’s task was to manipulate the people, not to represent them. The emperor and his officials had sweeping prerogatives over the goods and persons of the economy. They created at will state monopolies of salt and iron, controlled production or distribution of various goods, conscripted labor gangs and soldiery on a vast and merciless scale, forbade social gatherings and all unlicensed organizations, and generally ruled without fear of any higher law.” [Fairbank 76:136]
; “[T]he efficiency of the one man at the top [the emperor] was constantly impaired by his becoming a bottleneck. All business of importance was expected to receive his approval. All legislation and precedent were established by his edict. Modern China still suffers from this tradition. In view of the complete and arbitrary power which the imperial bureaucracy asserted over the whole of Chinese life, it is amazing how few and how scattered the officials were in number.” [114]
• “The absence of a formal ‘rule of law’ and of institutionalized countervailing powers that could see to its proper functioning, moreover, made the Qing administration vulnerable to ‘bad’ officials from the bottom to the very top. Lack of funding, lack of qualified personnel, lack of clear rules and the tendency to see any kind of failure by officials as moral failure (i.e. a personal fault) – which also is quite un-bureaucratic – made life hard for all officials and created a situation in which they were almost forced to ‘improvize’ and then get into trouble.” [Vries 15:275]
4. • Chinese officials had various legal privileges and were exempt from various criminal laws. See [Dawson 78:50-1] and [Fairbank 57:245-6]; “Officials were also given other legal privileges. They were exempted from corvee service. They could not be arrested and investigated without the approval of the emperor. Neither were they subject to corporal punishment. The punishment could be cancelled by giving up official rank or by paying a fine. Those procedures were given in detail in the codes of various dynasties. The inequality between the officials and the commoners was most striking in the fact the punishment of a commoner who injured an official was heavier than in ordinary cases in which both parties were commoners.” [246]
5. • See the sources on China’s lack of written laws, above.
• “[I]n Ming and Qing China, the official had wide-ranging authority, at times serving simultaneously as tax-collector, judge, and employer so that, in effect, the corrupt official was selling a wide range of services.” [Ni 05:2]
; “Individual local government officials served not only as administrators of public affairs but also as tax collectors and judges of local courts. The multiple roles assumed by the individual officials made checks on his power difficult.” [6-7]
• “A single local magistrate combines functions which ought to be distributed among at least six different officers. A man who is at once the civil and the criminal judge, the sheriff, the coroner, the treasurer, and the tax commisioner for a large and populous district, cannot attend to all the details of his work.” [Smith 94:230]
• “[W]ith all these demands on their resources the small farmers’ living was precarious, and many found themselves compelled to sell their lands and become tenant-farmers or even sell themselves and their dependents into slavery. Thus land got into the hands of powerful people who were themselves able to avoid paying tax. Land could never be fairly taxed because landowners were themselves the ones who formulated and administered government land policy. This was an inevitable law and all who attempted to break it were doomed to failure.” [Dawson 78:194]
• “Chinese in leadership positions enjoy a wider range of authority for which they are unaccountable than do those from more democratic legalistic systems. The result is that more decisions are made in private by fewer people in Chinese culture… [L]eaders are not required to justify their decisions openly.” [Bond 91:85]
; “The granting of ‘favours’ is an important component of paternalism, as it builds a network of people tied to someone in authority out of indebtedness and obligation. Such a network is an invaluable resource in an arbitrary world unprotected by the rule of law… [S]uch quid pro quo exchanges will be more common in hierarchical societies unleavened by the rule of law.” [86]
• “In fact, laws were usually designed to serve those in power. They [were] often arbitrary and ever-changing (depending on whichever dynasty/egomaniac was in power at the time). While Western societies developed to be legally based—with the rule of law enforced fairly, more or less—Chinese society was controlled by the capricious rules of those in power.”
• www.china-mike.com/chinese-culture/understanding-chinese-mind/guanxi/
6. • See section II-3 and its sources.
• “The magistrate [in the late Chinese imperial period] heard all cases within his area, both civil and criminal. There were no juries to give their verdict or advocates to present the cases for and against the accused. The magistrate conducted the hearing alone and alone made his decision. Prior to the hearing he would have investigated the case himself, and so he combined the roles of detective, police chief, prosecutor, judge, and jury. He only had the authority to pronounce sentences in minor cases where beating or the wearing of the cangue were the appropriate penalty. In other cases his recommended punishments were subject to the approval of his superiors…” [Dawson 78:45]
; “[L]itigation was where possible avoided. It was an expensive and disagreeable business, for the litigants were exposed to the cruelty and dishonesty of government runners and were dealt with in court in a humiliating manner.” [162]
• “The people avoided litigation in the magistrates court, where plaintiffs as well as defendents could be interrogated with prescribed forms of torture, and everyone would have to pay fees to the Yamen underlings.” [Fairbank 76:120]
• “No writs of certiorari, habeas corpus, mandamus and the rest of the American folderol encumbered swift punishment [under China’s famous penal code], nor was doom stayed by attorneys contending that the warrant was signed in the wrong county, or with the wrong ink, or the rest of the familiar obstructions, legal but nonsensical, afflicting us today. There were no “new trials” with the idea that, if tried a sufficient number of times, a criminal might by averages have a chance to get off scot free. Rarely, very rarely, the privilege of appeal to the emperor was exercised, presumably in instances of civil judgment in most cases. This appeal was attended with hazards. One account tells us that the appellant was first given a sound beating, and then banished to a distance for a period to think the matter over. Then if he wanted to persist in his appeal, he was warned that if it should not be sustained by the emperor, and the evidence found insufficient for a redirected verdict, the appellant must suffer death.” [Townsend 33:111-2]
; “These [hellish] punishments no longer appear among the legal crime preventives on Chinese statutes. Officials, however, continue outside the large foreignized centers to punish pretty much as they please. As always, they themselves are the law – or lack of it – and their present-day abominations are widespread and fiendish to a degree that persons who have not lived in isolated parts of China can scarcely believe.” [59-60]
7. • On Chinese government’s brutal predations of its people, including military impressments, see section II-3 and its sources.
• “The Asian condition was summed up by Raede as ‘property is insecure. In this one phrase the whole history of Asia is contained.” [Jones 87:165]
; “The [Chinese] empire was an Asian revenue pump concealed by a mask of solidarity and any notion of an implicit social contract in which services of material consequence were supplied by the emperor in return for his share of the national product is spurious.” [206]
; “Harris cites examples of ruthlessly organized building projects where the numbers of workers were clearly too large to have organized themselves on a voluntary basis, like a village fete. The instances demonstrate a difference in kind between exerted in vast, centralised polities and the social control in the decentralised society of Europe. The latter had no joys to offer like the building of part of the Grand Canal of China around A.D. 600 by a population of five-and-a-half-million, guarded by 50,000 police inclined to exert fierce retribution on families who withheld labour. Reportedly more than two million were ‘lost’. Of one million labourers conscripted at the start of the seventh century to build the Great Wall over half are said to have died on the job.” [10]
• “European rulers and enterprising lords who sought to grow revenues [by expanding towns] had to attract participants by the grant of franchises, freedoms, and privileges—in short, by making deals. They had to persuade them to come. (That was not the way in China, where rulers moved thousands and tens of thousands of human cattle and planted them on the soil, the better to grow things.)” [Landes 06:37]
• “Perhaps the most generally oppressive practice in China is that of farming out the tax collection privileges to the highest bidders. This is done in “government” territory. The tax collection privileges are sold by districts and hsiens – a hsien is a small division something on the order of a township. The successful bidder is required to turn in a specified amount. But he can collect as much in excess of this amount as he pleases and keep it himself. He can hire his own soldiers, too, to coerce objectors. The result is what would be expected. The tax collector’s tenure of office may be brief, so he squeezes all he can out of an already poverty-stricken and many-times looted population. He needs a retirement fund in the event that politics change – a practical certainty.
Methods are accordingly cruel. Outrageous levies are loaded on in a spirit of simple plundering. Persons appealing for mercy are punished or shot down. Levies often amount to confiscation of all a family possesses. At times families are subjected to abominable cruelties merely because a previous tax collector has entirely cleaned them out and they have nothing with which to meet new demands. No sentiment of indulgence mitigates the lot of those oppressed in this fashion. A Chinese not dealing with his own family or with a close ally is a thoroughgoing fiend unhampered by scruples of any sort.” [Townsend 33:232]
; In [Townsend 33:11-2], Townsend explains how in the 19th and early 20th century, millions of Chinese, largely businessmen, flocked to the foreign (White) trading outpost at Canton, to avoid predations by their own government.
8. • “Living in an insecure environment [in historical China in the past millennium], merchants strove to make a profit in good times, yet often chose to hide wealth and keep a low profile rather than expanding their businesses, being conscious about the risk of expropriation.” [Chen 12:58]
• “It was entirely normal for Chinese to bury and hide valuables and money in times of trouble. Silver would certainly be hidden in this way. Once hidden, it would be risky to bring it out, even as silver prices rose, lest neighbors and others suspected that one had hidden treasure. The phenomenon of hidden valuables has recurred many times: during the collapse of the Ming dynasty, during the Taiping rebellion after 1850, again during the disturbances and the Boxer rising of the 1890s, not to mention the many tales of torture of landowners in the early days of the Chinese Communists to make them reveal their hidden valuables.” [Gelber 06:3-4]
• “Few Chinese homes in areas outside foreign settlements will reveal on the outside any indication of prosperity. If you go inside, you may find things intimating comfortable means, but the wall and the gate and everything outside will be in woeful disrepair, suggesting the slums. The advantage of this is that claims of having no money can be better sustained by such evidence, and also that outward evidence of wealth would invite official extortions as well as plots by brigands. Unlike most other people in days of prosperity, the Chinese conceal theirs from the world as much as possible in most instances, and make it known only to trusted friends and guests…” [Townsend 33:118]
9. • “Another salient feature of the dominant Chinese philosophy, usually simply called Confucianism, is that it is exclusively politico-ethical. Logically these two aspects were linked: a predominantly political ideology is an intolerant ideology. In practice, for the dual purpose of social and intellectual control, it was invented, consolidated, and perfected over centuries the great Chinese bureaucracy.” [Qian 85:24]
; “Dong, a well-known prime minister under the powerful emperor Han Wu-di, initiated the epoch-making slogan: ‘Abolish all One Hundred Schools; advocate Confucianism only.’ The content of Confucianism evolved in the course of history. Many elements of Buddhism and Taoism were absorbed by it to form an identifiable dominant ideology (and scholarship)… For 2,000 years China was shackled by this ideology of heirarchism, which explicitly endorses an obediant attitude, a self-contented outlook, and a pacifist stand to deal with an ellegedly changeless world.” [106]
• “The ethics of Li gave a high value to order of rank and social position. The ethics of Confucianism was one for the governing class, namely, for people who were ranked in high positions in society. These people were the governing class politically and the intelligentsia culturally. Superiority in society and status in the govering class was the important thing. A one-sided obedience of the lower class to members of the upper class was emphasized. This phase of Confucianism was also supported by rulers of all dynasties after the Han. The fact was that Confucian morality protected the position and the power of the government and gave it justification. This line of thought was easily accepted by the Chinese, because from ancient times, Chinese society was based on an order constructed upon the discrimination of classes.” [Nakamura 64:265]
• “Like Mao, Chiang [Kai-shek] came to see himself as China’s great patriarch, savior, and teacher. His world view was informed by Confucianism, instilled in him by his severe teachers and mother. Confucianism does not lend itself to co-operation and the hierarchy it calls for must be continually and ruthlessly maintained. Obedience is all. Benevolence is a sure sign of weakness. Anyone caught criticizing the Chongqing government was executed or given life in jail.” [Parfitt 12:133]
10. • “Words and expressions used commonly in every day life in China were also greatly influenced by this idea of social order. For example, there are many kinds of personal pronouns directed to others, and each of them is used according to the social class of the person addressed; it is the same in the case of the person doing the talking. In the universal phenomenon of death, various terms are also used according to the social status of the deceased. Besides these, the Chinese classics state in detail that different terms expressing the same thing should be used in accordance with the social position of the person. There are also some kinds of adverbs which express respect or humility in China.” [Nakamura 64:265-6]
————
C. Whites have had more power-sharing institutions; China has been autocratic.
In Europe, there were multiple power centers, including kings, nobles, the church, parliaments, merchant-run cities, and industrial magnates, who continuously jostled for sway [1]; in China, anyone deemed a rival to the imperial dynasty was laid low. To reduce the hereditary power of landed noble families, an examination system based on Confucian dogma was created to admit state officials, who, swearing absolute loyalty to the imperial family, were removed from their home district and rotated about [2]. China’s main folk religion was run by the state [3], and other religious institutions such as Buddhism were brought under state control and ‘Confucianized’, never obtaining the independent power that Christianity did in Europe [4]. China’s imperial schools and its astronomers-cum-astrologers were obliged to serve imperial propaganda [5]; while universities in Europe had sufficient independence to seek objective truths [6]. The Chinese state took control of most major industries [7], often restricted economic activity including international trade [8], and prevented businessmen from gaining the political sway they have had in White nations. While European businesses negotiated and cooperated as equals with government [9], Chinese businesses could operate only at the pleasure of officials and were often exploited [10].
1. • “Whereas in other societies ultimate power usually rested in the hands of an emperor or king, and was therefore (in theory) ‘one and undivided’, in Western Europe kings had to share power with bishops and abbots, and lords had to share it with cities and their citizens. Power not only became constitutionalized, but also the subject of negotiations between a variety of power-holders, between the Emperor and the Pope, between kings and bishops, or kings and cities, and, at a lower level, between city governments and guilds…. Compromises based on bargaining became essential elements in European power sharing arrangements.” [Zanden 09a:47-9]
• “[O]fficially, Henry V was king of England, Wales, and indeed France, to which he laid claim. But on the ground in rural England real power was in the hands of the great nobility, the descendents of the men who had imposed Magna Carta on King John as well as thousands of gentry landowners and innumerable corporate bodies, clerical and lay. The church was not under royal control until the reign of Henry VIII. Towns were often self-governing. And, crucially, the most important commercial center [London] in the country was almost completely autonomous. Europe was not only made up of states; it was also made up of estates: aristocrats, clergymen, and townsfolk…
Not only did the City compete with the Crown for power. There was competition even within the City. There was competition even within the City. The livery companies can all trace their origins back to the medieval period: the weavers to 1130, the bakers to 1155, the fishmongers to 1272, the goldsmiths, merchant taylors and skinners to 1327, the drapers to 1364, the mercers to 1384 and the grocers to 1428. These guilds or ‘misteries’ exerted considerable power over their particular sectors of the economy, but they had political power too. Edward III acknowledged this when he declared himself to be ‘a brother’ of the Linen-Armourers’ (later Merchant Taylors’) Guild. By 1607 the Merchant Taylors could count as past and present honorary members seven kings and a queen, seventeen princes and dukes, nine countesses, duchesses and baronesses, over 200 earls, lords and other gentlemen and an archbishop. The ‘great twelve’ companies – in order of precedence: mercers, grocers, drapers, fishmongers, goldsmiths, skinners, merchant taylors, haberdashers, salters, ironmongers, vintners and clothworkers – are a reminder of the power that London’s craftsmen and merchants were once able to wield, even if their role today is largely ceremonial.” [Ferguson 11:39-41]
• “Moreover, in post-medieval Europe political fragmentation involved a great deal more than just a competitive set of policies of independent rulers… Fragmentation of power was as prevalent within states as between them. For one thing, power was divided between central authorities and local courts and provincial estates. In Germany and Italy, of course, this had become formalized, but in other “states” such as the Dutch Republic, the central government had little power. Moreover, in many countries there were semi-autonomous organizations that exercised their own justice and sovereignty such as universities, boroughs, and guilds. Even in political units that superficially resembled modern nation states, such as Britain, much of the actual administration was concentrated in the hands of local authorities (JP’s) who often had their own views.” [Mokyr 05b:11]
; “The picture of Europe in the period 1500-1750 is one in which innovative, often radical, intellectuals are able to play one political authority against one another: different polities against each other, and when necessary also central vs. local power, the private against the public sphere, and spiritual against secular authority. By moving from one place to another when the environment became too hostile, the members of the intellectual class (“clerisy” as they are sometimes called) could remain active in the transnational community of scholars, the “Republic of letters.”” [Mokyr 06:24-5]
• “[E]fforts at royal centralization and consolidation [in Europe] could proceed effectively only through a series of negotiated compacts with those to be incorporated. European towns and cities were the beneficiaries of this particular power constellation, as chartered privileges, immunities, and favoured terms on tolls, customs, and excises stimulated trade and drew settlers keen to “run their own lives” through the exercise of civic enfranchisements. Did the Asian “commercial cities” of which the revisionists speak enjoy the same or similar legal and political charters? Did they extract or obtain from their imperial rulers comparable powers of self-governance and autonomy, or send voting delegates to national assemblies vested with deliberative responsibilities? Are there Asian counterparts to, say, Venice or Genoa? Or to the federated cities of the German Hansa, a mercantile alliance that sent and received diplomatic missions, and even waged war against the Danish crown (1367–70), imposing terms upon a defeated king that ratified the League’s commercial privileges in the Baltic and reaffirmed the municipal liberties of its member communes?” [Bryant 06:415-6]
2. • “Although written examinations were used in China during the Han period… office was generally the privilege of powerful families… The aristocracy was at last outstripped by meritocracy*, largely because Empress Wu, having usurped the throne, could not rely on the aristocrats from the metropolitan area who had previously had the monopoly of political strength, but instead had to secure for herself a new political base by drawing on the largely un-tapped resources of south-east China. After this the examination system remained the predominant channel of entry into the civil service until its abolishion in 1905…” [Dawson 78:33-4]
* In fact, the civil service examinations remained often corrupt; see section II-8.E and its sources.
• “During the selection of government officials, the pool of candidates was determined by the recommendations from government officials of all levels. In the ideal case, they should have recommended individuals with both talent and virtue, which could include both their relatives and their foes. In real practices, nepotism inevitably became one major factor for the recommendations of officials at all levels and lost the crucial element for the selection of talents: fair competition. Furthermore, through
this recommendation system, it was possible for some powerful families to acquire enough strength to even threaten the throne of the emperor. Sui Dynasty (589-618) established the civil-service examination system, which selected talents through fair and impartial examination.” [Lin 08:14]
• “Every year, in the long history of China, no matter which dynasty and which emperor ruled in the national capital, thousands of male candidates, young or no longer young, the great majority coming from families of landed gentry, worked hard in a narrow range of classical works, committed huge amounts of material to rote memory, struggled to master a cumbersome system of writing, engaged in fierce competition among their peers, all in order to obtain offices, whose credo was nothing but absolute loyalty to the imperial family.” [Qian 85:107]
• “Government officials, civil and military, were not allowed to work in a region where their family lived or where members of their family were in office. When outside Peking, they were transferred to another district at least once in every three years. This ‘rule of avoidance’ was applied to prevent them from getting too enmeshed in local politics and becoming pawns of local interests, and in the hope of ensuring that they would continue to be independent servants of the state.” [Vries 15:271]
• “The bureaucracy had, from the beginnings of the empire, sided with the emperor in helping him eliminate all hereditary elites other than those of the royal house, but the bureaucrats had, in the course of this struggle, made education substitute for aristocracy as a basis for perpetuating class privilege.” [Stover 76:132-3]
3. • “[A] branch of [a Chinese magistrate’s] duties which had to be meticulously observed was the religious role. In the eyes of the people he was not only the local representative of the imperial government but also chief priest of the region. In the popular imagination in late imperial China, the gods had become organized into a kind of bureaucracy which was an extension of the earthly bureaucracy, and there was an especially close link between the county magistrate and the God of Walls and Moats (or city god) of the city in which the magistrate had his official residence. The city god was the magistrate’s opposite number in the pantheon, so on arrival to take up office a magistrate would make sacrifice to the god and swear an oath invoking his holy wrath if he were corrupt or unjust in his administration. He also burnt incense at his temple once a fortnight and visited it on occasions of crisis and calamity. The magistrate also made periodic visits to the temples of Confucius, of the Gods of War and Literature, and to a great many other local shrines. In times of drought he was expected to pray to the gods for rain. Not only would he go to the local temples to pray, but the people would bring images of the gods to his yamen for him to pray to them. Although Confucianism’s basic concern with matters of this world rather than the next has often led both Europeans and modern Chinese eager to rescue their culture from the charge of superstition to look upon the Confucian scholar as an agnostic philosopher, in fact the district magistrate spent much of his time engaged in reliogious ceremonies. This closeness to the supernatural powers together with the people’s consciousness that he was also in his official role the representative of the Son of Heaven gave him a kind of superhuman authority which was very necessary if he were to fulfil even a part of the heavy responsibilities which befell him.” [Dawson 78:52-3]
4. • “Religion [in China] also did not obtain that separate and independent status which a powerful church has sometimes achieved in European society.” [Dawson 78:164]
; “Because uncontrolled entry into the sangha meant that too many took the vows, the state had gradually taken control over the supervision of ordination, which in India had always been a matter solely for the individual and the Buddhist community… The state also took upon itself the power to defrock monks, and many purges took place to get rid of undesirable elements… In the T’ang dynasty, supervision of the sangha, which had previously been in the hands of monks, passed into into the control of government offices run by lay officials, and bureaucratic supervision by the state was to persist to modern times. The construction of temples and monasteries, which had previously been a matter of individual piety, also began to be regarded as a matter for the state… At the same time the monks became increasingly subject to secular laws rather than to their own code of conduct, and restrictions were placed on their movements and activities.” [123-4]
; “In the last centuries of the imperial imperial the government exercised an increasingly firm control over religious behavior. The persecution of heresy which had helped to reduce Buddhism to a servant of the state and society continued, so that sectarian religious movements were still being suppressed in the present century. Religions came under the administration of a government department, the Board of Rites, and no new monasteries, temples, or other religious buildings could be put up without government permission… The purpose of government policy was to ensure that religion was a force for political stability and to prevent the growth of independent religious groups which might prove to be a threat to the administration by offering people an instant cure for their misfortunes.” [167]
• “The state tried various measures to meet the [problem of Buddhists hoarding metals], none of which were really effective in the long run. The real cure was to wipe out the Buddhist organizations. In this way the Buddhist organizations were gradually taken over and controlled by the nation. A system of officials to control Buddhism was founded in the Eastern Chin dynasty (317–419): in every district and prefecture, a priestly official was appointed as a government officer to control the monk groups in the respective district or prefecture. Because Buddhist society was completely controlled by the state, Buddhists had to compromise with the doctrine that the Emperor was deified.” [Nakamura 64:273]
• “The several persecutions of Buddhism culminating in the ninth century were in part a struggle to keep land out of the hands of the church and more easily amenable to taxation. But no struggle between church and state developed in medieval China comparable to that in the West. The church—whether Buddhist or Taoist—was quite unable to achieve independence of the temporal power. Their preisthoods and temples in recent centuries have remained loosely decentralized, dependent on modest local support but without organized lay congregations or any nation-wide administration, and passive in matters of politics.” [Fairbank 76:132]
• “Chinese Buddhism has a “lack of organizational centrality as compared with its conspicuous presence in Western Christianity—a fact that makes it misleading to refer to Chinese Buddism as a “church”…[W]hatever centralization did exist in Chinese Buddhism was imposed on it by the government rather than self-created. The history of Chinese Buddhism and, pari passu, of religious Taoism and the syncretic sects, is, to an important extent, the history of the efforts of the state to control and regularize them. In these efforts the state was very largely successful. Sometimes the efforts went beyond ordinary legislative controls and culminated in active religious persecution… For the most part, however, the institutional religions accepted the governmental controls without resistance.” [Bodde 91:155]
5. • “Founded in the eighth century CE, an Imperial Academy in the [Chinese] capital topped a complex educational structure, with a central Educational Directorate superintending a standardized Confucian curriculum for the empire. A host of private academies following the standard curriculum also blossomed. Unlike European universities, none of these schools possessed a legal charter granting them a permanent, independent existence. All existed by tradition and the will of the emperor. They could be and were closed simply by decree. Furthermore, the entire focus of these schools—public and private alike—was careerist and directed to preparing students to take the state civil-service exams. None granted degrees. Even the Imperial Academy was merely another bureau at which scholarly functionaries taught for limited periods of time, and only one such academy existed in the whole of China, compared to Europe in the following centuries with its scores of autonomous colleges and universities.” [McClellan 06:129-30]
• “Because the [Civil Service Examination] system was tightly controlled by the government hierarchy (the Directorate of Education), no tradition of independent learning emerged, and no agency was given autonomous control of a curriculum of eduation. Everything centered around passing the Civil Service Examinations, and consequently, students were only interested in mastering the material required for the state examinations. One learned official wrote in 1042, “When the examination year [one of every three years) comes, the Directorate School is flooded with more than a thousand students… and when the examination is over, they all disappear, and techers find nothing to do except sit on their chairs.”” [Huff 11:164]
• “As a direct response to the importance of the competitive examination, the centres of learning, which were often staffed by former or present civil servants, mostly took the content of these examinations as their curriculum. The imperial academies, sometimes erroneously thought of as equivalents of Western universities, were instead “bureaucratic subdivisions of the administrative structure that could be expanded, reorganized, or abolished at a moment’s notice, as they often were” (Huff: 306)…” [Bekar 02:21]
• On China’s civil service examinations being devoted to Confucian literature, see section IV-5.B and its sources. On Confucianism being an ethic of respect and obedience to superiors, see the previous section and its sources.
• “[G]overnment control was… all-important in the case of astronomy (including the making of the calendar) because the age-old belief in the oneness of humankind and nature kept the government under a never-ending obligation to maintain careful study of the heavenly bodies…
[T]he official character of Chinese astronomy was probably also an important reason why this science failed to progress beyond a certain point. The earliest complete surviving Chinese law code of AD 653 forbids the private possession of “all instruments representing the celestial bodies, astronomical charts and writings,. . .calendars of the seven luminaries (sun moon, and five planets),” …Violators of the statute are punishable by two years of penal servitude. The prohibition is repeated, with slightly varying language, in all subsequent codes down to the end of the Ch’ing dynasty.” [Bodde 91:190-1]
• “Yabuuti characterises the same practice [persistent Chinese recording of astronomical observations], besides research in calendrical science, as ‘unremitting observation of astrological omens’. He also wrote: ‘Chinese astronomers were on the whole bureaucrats first, following established routines to discharge established responsibilities, and only secondarily researchers…'” [Qian 85:110]
• More on Chinese astronomy being mainly astrology in section IV-6.D and its sources.
6. • “One of the most important Medieval institutional innovations was the corporation, which treated organisations as entities distinct from both their individual members and the state. The multitude of European corporations—the church, guilds, universities, and some cities—each with its own range of authority, was a key development in the pluralism that has characterised much of the West’s institutions to this day.
One of the first corporations was the university. The rising urban prosperity that began in the 11th century led to a revival of the demand for education. As Church schools grew in the major urban centres some evolved into universities. Over time, universities became corporate groups of teachers and students who were self governing with a considerable degree of autonomy from local and national interference. As Edward Grant (173) observes: “To a remarkable extent, church and state granted to the universities corporate powers to regulate themselves, thus enabling the universities to determine their own curricula, to establish criteria for the degrees of their students, and to determine the teaching fitness of their faculty members…
Instead of rejecting this branch of Classical learning [Aristolean natural philosophy] as subversive, the church sought to Christianise it. Reconciling Classical learning, particularly the writings of Aristotle, with religious doctrine became the most important research program of the 12th and 13th centuries…
As Lynn White (90) puts it “…the chief period of Europe’s reappropriation of Greek science extends from the later eleventh century through the thirteenth century and marks the birth of our present scientific movement.” By the 13th and 14th centuries, the church, academics, and most religious people were on side with those who understood the world to be controlled by natural laws—laws that it was man’s duty to discover…” [Bekar 02:13-4]
• “This legal revolution of the Middle Ages is intimately connected to the history of the universities in the West. No other civilization conferred the privileges of a corporation to institutions of higher learning wherein reason could find a “neutral space” of free inquiry. Grant convincingly shows that medieval Europe was the first civilization to “institutionalize reason” within self-governing universities which offered a curriculum “overwhelmingly oriented toward analytical subjects: logic, science, mathematics, and natural philosophy”. While medieval intellectuals were prohibited from reaching ultimate truths that were contrary to revealed truth, natural philosophers were free to pursue knowledge about the universe “in a remarkably secular and rationalistic manner with little interference from the Church and its theologians.”… In the numerous universities that flourished in Europe in the 12th century, the ethos of science and commitment to rational dialogue based on logic, evidence, and experimentation was nurtured.” [Duchesne 11a:276-7]
; Duchesne reviews the historical literature that shows medieval Christian scholars were okay with Greek-derived principles of reason and logic and the pursuit of understanding scientific natural laws in [Duchesne 14:64-71].
• “The healthy skepticism of the men of the twelfth-century renaissance was underpinned by a distinct, even enthusiastic naïveté… Devout clergymen, they innocently conceived investigation of the natural world as their Christian duty, undertaken in a spirit of gratitude toward God, “to help men reach a higher level of understanding of the Creator” (Tina Stiefel). So far from anticipating conflict between study of natural phenomena and Church doctrine, they felt that their researches helped combat the ancient, still popular pagan superstitions centered on magical trees, rocks, streams, and forests. In the demythologizing of nature, the medieval Church, following the lead of Boethius, anticipated the Renaissance humanists. As George Ovitt observes, “The scientia of the Middle Ages was theology, but theology was understood to include not only the nature of God and of moral laws, but also the nature of the world created by God.”” [Gies 94:164]
7. • See the [Fairbank 76:136] and [Landes 06:7-8] citations in the last section’s sources.
• “Government control of industries was a characteristic feature of Chinese technology. The government nominally owned all resources in the country, and it monopolized production in key sectors by creating government workshops and state factories for such industries as mining, iron production, salt supply, silk, ceramics, paper-making, and alcoholic beverages. Through these monopolies run by bureaucrats, the Chinese state itself became a merchant producer, in large part to provide for its enormous military needs. The government commanded a vast array of specialized craftsmen, and anyone with technical skills was ostensibly subject to government service. The Yüan emperors, for example, enlisted 260,000 skilled artisans for their own service; the Ming commanded 27,000 master craftsmen, each with several assistants; and in 1342 17,000 state-controlled salt workers toiled along the lower Yangtze. ” [McClellan 06:123-4]
• “Many of the [Chinese] state’s needs were satisfied by the establishment of state enterpises. For example, armaments were made in state munitions factories, naval vessels were constructed in state shipyards, palaces were built and canals excavated as state undertakings, and silks silks and porcelains needed for the court were provided by state workshops and potteries. At the same time the market in essential goods such as grain, salt and iron was controlled… State monopolies in salt and iron were also introduced under the same emperor [in the Han dynasty], so that these commodities could only be manfactured under government licence…” [Dawson 78:193-4]
8. • “[T]he stagnation of Chinese civilization is due to the self-interest maximization of the autocrats under the environment lacking effective international competition. In order to curb the development of domestic non-governmental forces, the autocrats destroyed non-governmental economic organizations directly and designed intricate institutions that could destroy the factors essential for economic development.” [Mo 04:6]
; “The advanced maritime technology was not utilized, stopped growing and was gradually forgotten when the government prohibited building big vessels and overseas trade.” [19]
; “[T]he strength of the non-governmental forces and maritime technology developed in the Sung period provoked a sustainable coastal and overseas non-governmental force that generated continuous struggles against the governmental force. The market force in the form of pirate merchants in the Ming and Ch’ing dynasties represents the first non-governmental force that was sustainable for centuries. This provoked the lengthy oppressive policies in the Ming and Ch’ing dynasties. ” [25-6]
• “China lacked a free market and institutionalized property rights. The Chinese state was always stepping in to interfere with private enterprise—to take over certain activities, to prohibit and inhibit others, to manipulate prices, to exact bribes…[examples]” [Landes 06:6]
• “China, in a way, also had its ‘coal’ and its ‘colonies’, but government there was a serious hindrance in making the most of them. In China government did not collude with ‘capitalists entrepreneurs’ or support them but normally controlled or at least mistrusted them. As regards coal mining, the Qing rulers often prohibited opening mines in the first place, or wanted those already opened, closed down. Initiatives by government itself to open mines or to ‘modernise’ them were absent. When it comes to the exploitation of newly incorporated territories or of Manchuria, we can only conclude that many chances were not utilised, or rather not even considered.” [Vries 13:349]
; “In literally every textbook on China’s history during the very long eighteenth century, and more in general during the early modern period, one can easily find numerous examples of government rulings that were hampering, if not downright banning, foreign trade and that were hostile to emigration by Chinese as well as immigration by foreigners. One need not be a champion of mainstream free-market economics to suspect that such measures must have had some negative effects on China’s economy and will not always have been enthusiastically welcomed by its merchants and producers. China’s rulers were not very keen, to put it mildly, on ‘opening’ China for foreign trade and foreign traders and saw no need for ‘international relations’. The Macartney Embassy that is referred to in each and every book on Qing China was not the only mission that turned out to be a fiasco. Macartney himself refers to six previous embassies. An embassy from the Netherlands, sent in the 1790s, achieved no results either. The Amherst Mission sent by Britain in 1816, also was a failure. When the Russians sent an embassy from Irkutsk in the beginning of the nineteenth century to negotiate either an opening of Chinese ports to Russian shipping or permission for overland caravans to enter the interior of China, it did not even succeed in reaching Peking. There simply is no equivalent of this kind of interference in the history of Britain.” [Vries 15:353]
9. • “In capitalist countries in the early modern era… merchants had major political clout. They received all sorts of support such as monopolies from government but in turn supported government, in particular financially. None of this existed in China, or in any other major and economically advanced state elsewhere outside Europe. People acting like capitalists never even came close to having the kind of political clout they had in Britain or in other mercantile states in Western Europe. There was no institutionalised collusion between them and the state. In contrast, the state as a rule fiercely opposed the emergence of a merchant class that might become a threat to its power. ” [Vries 13:342]
• “The point of course is not that China’s rulers were quite interventionist in this respect: so were mercantilist rulers in the West. Western mercantilism probably more than anything else was about interference in and manipulation of foreign trade. The point is how and to what purpose rulers interfered. In Western Europe – and most clearly in Britain and the Dutch Republic – we see something of a symbiosis and a mutual re-enforcement of ‘power’ and ‘profit’ (i.e. of officialdom and merchants), with both parties, not necessarily for the same reasons, sharing the conviction that foreign trade was of the utmost importance and must be stimulated. In China, on the contrary, rulers were quite sceptical of the positive effects of foreign trade and, in particular, the contacts with foreigners such trade implied. They were much less obsessed by it, and, what is very important, they did not feel the urge to support it for financial reasons.” [Vries 15:351]
10. • “[The merchant] was placed at the bottom of the social scale. In actual fact, however, the merchant was kept in check by the official as a minor ally whose activities could be used and milked in the interest of the official class or of the state. As Etienne Balazs has pointed out, commercial transactions were always subject to the superintendance and taxation of the officials. Government monopolies of staple articles, like salt and iron in ancient times, or like tea, silk, tobacco, salt, and matches more recently, have been an expression of the overriding economic prerogatives of the state. No merchant class was allowed to rise independently and encroach upon these prerogatives.
On the other hand, it was always possible to work out a close community of interests between the merchant and the official, for official patronage and support were necessary for any big commercial undertaking. Both could profit where neither could succeed alone. Merchants, bankers, brokers, and traders of all sorts were therefore a class attached as subordinates to the bureaucracy. As handlers and manipulators of goods and capital, they assisted the officials in extracting the surplus not only from commerce but also from agriculture.” [Fairbank 76:48-9]
• “As compared to their Western counterparts, [Chinese merchants] were less powerful and held in somewhat lower esteem. They were less well protected against government and government officials. On the one hand, this made it easy and even seductive for officials to bully merchants and to turn them into scapegoats. On the other hand, it made merchants hesitant to fully trust and support government.” [Vries 15:234]
; “Western merchants who worked with one of the chartered companies, because of their charter, were much less at the mercy of the state in their daily operations than the Chinese ‘Hong’ merchants. Chartered companies, moreover, had access to external finance via emerging capital markets, whereas Hong merchants had to borrow money from Westerners or people from India, who, considering the high interest rates in China, were quite willing to ‘help’ their trade partners. And finally, as compared to the highly integrated bureaucratic apparatuses of the English and the Dutch East India Companies, Chinese Hong merchants were part of an organization that was only weakly integrated. They were not partners of the various government officials they had to deal with, but subordinates, as they often found out the hard way. Hong merchants basically were little better than government servants, squeezed between central government and the Westerners they traded with. Chartered companies, as collectives and for their members, had all sorts of means and rights that Hong merchants could only dream of.” [356]
• “The [Chinese] bureaucracy and the associated gentry were quintessential rent-seekers. They prevented the emergence of an independent commercial and industrial bourgeoisie on the European pattern. Entrepreneurial activity was insecure in a framework where legal protection for private activity was exiguous. Any activity that promised to be lucrative was subject to bureaucratic squeeze.” [Maddison 05:62]
• “Merchants occasionally flourished and achieved great wealth, but periodic prosecutions and confiscations ensured the marginality and low status of merchants as a class in Chinese society.” [McClellan 06:121]
• “Some local magistrates intentionally delayed cases to extract bribes. As a result, ‘‘merchants had to work hard to develop cordial ties with officials, both to limit the danger of bureaucratic predation and to have support in case of conflicts with other merchants’’.” [Chen 12:56]
————
D. Communist China is autocratic, just as were imperial regimes.
China’s present Communist regime is much like its past regimes, with a small elite class dictating to and exploiting the masses [1]. The imposition of Communism was a mass torture and murder operation [2]. Chinese people are permitted few rights; not even to a fair trial, free movement, or child-birth [3]. While White citizens take for granted the right to criticize their government, in China this is hazardous to your health. You will soon find yourself being tortured in a “black jail” or doing hard labor in a slave camp [4]. A popular spiritual meditation movement called Falun Gong is getting brutally persecuted, its practitioners even utilized for organ harvesting [5]. China’s regime strictly monitors and censors all forms of media, including the internet [6]. Nor did China’s long history of corruption skip a beat with the rise of Communism (next section).
1. • “[S]o far there wasn’t so much as a scintilla of evidence to suggest even a modicum of political liberalization, let alone full-blown egalitarianism. China was, purely and simply, a totalitarian state, and those who advocated an alternative tended to deny the obvious: communism fit China like a glove. It was legalism, Conficianism, feudalism, and the teachings of Lao Tzu all wrapped into one; a potent and frequently lethal blend of native ideologies in and of themselves highly toxic and recipes for disaster.
From Legalism, the Chinese Communist Party derived the Law as spelled out in The Book of Lord Shang, the document that spoke to the heart of the First Emperor and Mao Zedong. “A weak people,” declares its author, “means a strong state, a strong state means weak people.” As for Confucianism, the Party saw to it (after Mao died) that loyalty and obedience to one’s family was replaced by loyalty and obedience to one’s government. Indeed, the Confucian paradigm was found useful; however, it would have to contain fewer echelons, ones that were sharply defined. As for feudalism, the Party can be said to represent the nation’s sole landlord. China’s 800 million serfs (or peasants) are still legally bound to the land. Concerning Lao Tzu, his Tao Te Ching has served as a prescription for governance ever since it came into circulation. Of particular relevance is its third chapter, which reads: “If we stop looking for persons of superior morality to put in power, there will be no more jealousies among the people… By emptying their hearts, And filling their bellies, Weakening their intelligence, And toughening their sinews, Ever striving to make the people knowledgeless and desireless.” [Parfitt 12:296-7]
• “As the result of the two revolutions in the modern period, the traditional order of status and social class is completely destroyed. However, a new class order was re-established after these two revolutions. In the Communist government, the iron rule of the party bureaucracy is supreme, and demands strict obedience from the people. In this sense, it can be said that esteem for superiority in status still persists today in China. ” [Nakamura 64:268]
2. • For gory details on the horrors of the imposition of Chinese Communism, see [Parfitt 12:161-70,214-5], [Epoch 12], [Akbar 10], [Edwards 10].
3. • Videos on China’s well-known lack of rights and brutality:
Human Rights Violations in China
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWLvrErGKRY
What Are China’s Human Rights Violations?
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oo6wspVVjAA
China’s human rights record – in 60 seconds
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=btbDzSGVxO8
TRT World – World in Focus: Human rights: China’s great challenge
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5H4ORXW34A
The Most Dangerous Job in China [a human rights lawyer]
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwdHyE8Xo3w
China’s Darkside: what the mainstream media won’t cover [home seizures, police brutality]
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4As-dVqbQI
Is This What Justice Is in China?
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqK5Hrn-4Fk
China’s Gestapo: the 6-10 Office
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=5N6il1oQm_w
; Forced abortions:
Stop Forced Abortion — China’s One Child Policy
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjtuBcJUsjY
Forced Abortion To Meet China’s One Child Policy
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_dGjB4suxY
• Chinese are not even free to move about: “In China there is a system of household registration known as the hukou, which essentially confines residents to their place of birth and to their work unit. Movement requires a permit, and the process involved in moving from the country to the city can take years. Even city dwellers wishing to study in another city require a temporary residence card. If a man from Hunan were to move to Shanghai to look for a job, he would be hard pressed to find one that was legitimate, and more than likely, his existence would be harsh: a reduced wage, poor living conditions, and the possibility of being rounded up, beaten, and then sent home… Access to national health care or public services would be denied.” [Parfitt 12:149-150]
; “There are still violent land seizures in China, only now cadres usually sell what they confiscate to businessmen looking to build hotels and factories.” [170]
• There are of course few protections for workers. Some videos:
Santa’s Workshop – Inside China’s Slave Labour Toy Factories
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF8jUDzz5bE
China Factories, Brutal Conditions Described
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQPrbwWWUD4
Inside Look at Sweatshop in China Where Children Work 20 Hour Days
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=ev4Gyvz8AhQ
Sweatshops in China
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wmEkdkQlMM
4. • Torture and enslavement without trial:
“Black” Jails in China
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAPWF3BH8mE
China’s Black Jails Still Exist: Amnesty International
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxYF8VwZLnE
Stretch Torture Method Alive in China
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR-vhNf_FKE
World’s Most Brutal Prison is in China
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=lz0bb15kTkE
Breaking footage : China’s Brutal Labor Camps, Part 1
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqsY9eB1HD4
Slavery thrives in Chinese prisons
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=yumfVvJFUw8
China’s Labor Camp Secret
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8sGJwsUFw4
“Utterly Destroyed” by Chinese Jail – Chinese Dissident Gao Zhisheng
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lWsMze7m9k
5. • Articles:
China’s long history of harvesting organs from living political foes
• nypost.com/2014/08/09/chinas-long-history-of-harvesting-organs-from-living-political-prisoners/
Report: China still harvesting organs from prisoners at a massive scale
• www.cnn.com/2016/06/23/asia/china-organ-harvesting/index.html
The reality of human organ harvesting in China
• www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/true-stories/the-reality-of-human-organ-harvesting-in-china/news-story/14d3aa5751c39d6639a1cc5b39f223b7
• Videos:
Stop Forced Live Organ Harvesting in China
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9H_eessuvU
China’s Secret Holocaust Part 1 [organ harvesting of political prisoners]
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5pojQ12lRI
China’s Secret Holocaust Part 2
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYHKHNk7VLg
China’s Secret Holocaust Part 3
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=QElHH0vDWpU
China: Human Rights Violation [torturing Falon Gong]
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbDSOmTWU7U
6. • “In Guilin, I had picked up editions of yesterday’s and today’s China Daily as I was curious to know what (the Communist Party publication said) was going on. A front-page headline from yesterday’s paper announced that a new law had been passed banning members of the media from reporting on accidents, natural disasters, and public health incidents— unless they had express permission from the state… In reality the law was a backlash for the reporting of the 2002-2003 SARS epidemic (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and the government’s bungled attempt to cover it up. The doctor who broke the story was jailed as were several journalists…
China jails more journalists than any other nation. In 2009, the Paris-based media watchdog, Reporters Without Borders, ranked China 168th out of 175 countires in terms of freedom of the press. The only nations to rank lower were Burma, Cuba, Eritria, Iran, Laos, North Korea, and Turkmenistan. Even weather reports are falsified in China…” [Parfitt 12:72-3]
• Videos on the well-known Chinese censorship:
Censorship in China
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-1qrW6hFFc
China’s Internet Censorship Explained
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po9qrFyZOM8
How Strict Are China’s Censorship Laws?
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJ0WVNrdWU0
China to Build Knockoff, Censored Wikipedia
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE9yrREHZeE
Spread Rumors, Go to Jail Says New Chinese Law
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJToPFW1bGg
————
E. White governors are generally honorable; Chinese governors are generally corrupt.
In White nations, government officials are generally honorable, while in China they are generally corrupt. Whites typically perform services to the public out of a sense of duty and make decisions fairly according to law, not expecting any quid pro quo from those served. Cases of corruption occur, but they are scandalous events. In China, graft and corruption are practically taken for granted, business as usual [1], notwithstanding the government’s perpetual anti-corruption sloganeering [2].
The magnitude of the Chinese corruption harvest is staggering [3]. Anything one needs service or approval for—a business license, a contract, a building permit, a job, a criminal investigation or trial, even a good doctor or school—requires furnishing bribes to the authorities beyond any official fees [4]. Corruption in China is part of a broader system of “squeeze”, whereby every worker takes a piece of the earnings of underlings while ceding a piece to superiors [5]. Officials are often underpaid and expected to collect extra ‘fees’ to augment their income [6]. The civil service examination system was corrupt as well; official degrees purchased as a license to ‘hunt and fish’ the people [7]. Tax collection was often farmed out, the collectors charging what they pleased [8]. Nepotism is prevalent [9]. Corruption of course impairs efficiency; a network of hospices was abandoned by the Qing due to rampant fraud and corruption [10], and a postal relay system was restricted since local officials exploited it [11]. Aid supplies donated to China were often just sold to the highest bidder [12]. Today’s Communist China is equally corrupt [13].
1. • “The Chinese have always conferred considerable discretionary authority on those in responsible positions… Within a hierarchy these authorities are less subject to supervisory checks and balances than are those in a more democratic political tradition. The stage is thus set for petitioners to attempt to influence the decisions of such officials through what Westerners call ‘bribery’. So, an application may be pushed to the front of a queue, a contract may be awarded to one whose tender is not the lowest, a ticket may found for a sold-out concert, a coveted job may be awarded to a friend’s son, all in exchange for various resources—cash, a gift of expensive liquor, or simply the acknowledgement of an outstanding favour, redeemable at some unspecified future time… Those who already have resources are better able to command further resources and those in positions of power are better able to use those positions to benefit themselves, their family, and their friends. The granting of ‘favours’ is an important component of paternalism, as it builds a network of people tied to someone in authority out of indebtedness and obligation. Such a network is an invaluable resource in an arbitrary world unprotected by the rule of law… [S]uch quid pro quo exchanges will be more common in hierarchical societies unleavened by the rule of law.” [Bond 91:86]
• “The imperial officials were responsible for all public events within their jurisdiction but not for all public funds…. The bureaucracy lived by what we would call today systematized corruption which sometimes beame extortion. This was a necessary concomitant of the system of intricate personal relations that each official had to maintain with his superiors, colleagues, and subordinates.” [Fairbank 76:115-6]
; “Nepotism supported the squeeze or “leakage” system by giving an added sanction for personal arrangements contrary to the public interest… Thus the interest of the imperial administration at the capital, which needed the sustenance of revenue from the provinces, was constantly in conflict with the multifarious private interests of all the officials, each of whom had to provide for his relatives and his further career. High office commonly meant riches… [stunning examples]. [Whites have also had corruption]… but in China corruption remained longer into modern times an accepted institution, unashamed and unafraid.” [116-7]
• “To the Westerner this is rack-renting, just as squeeze in office is viewed as corruption; but from the native Chinese viewpoint, which traditionally did not embrace the ethics of the Enlightenment, the “hunting and fishing of the people,” either in the form of rents or taxes, was a right taken in exchange for moral leadership.” [Stover 76:114]
; “Because profiteering in the name of imperial taxation was acknowledged by the emperor, the right of appointed officials to confiscate the peasants’ economic surplus made government the very cause of social inequality, from whose favoured few bureaucrats were recruited.” [132-3]
; “In exchange for the opportunity to get rich in the name of collecting imperial taxes, local officials had to satisfy Peking with only three things… (1) prostrating themselves before all messages received from the emperor, (2) keeping ritual statistics…, (3) forwarding candidates to the examinations…” [136]
• “Park concludes her article with a sentence that deserves to be quoted literally: ‘Thus the fiscal need for corruption compounded by the ineffectiveness of the criminal laws to prevent it and the professional benefits of engaging in it, contributed to the omnipresent corruption problem [sic] that plagued the eighteenth-century Chinese state and society.'” [Vries 15:156]; See the [Park 97] study of Chinese corruption.
• “We must also realise that in addition to the official taxes and allowances the civil servants were able to collect, they also exacted an endless series of additional payments, either with or without the approval of Peking that knew that the official taxes and allowances, and salaries, were inadequate. Simply counting the number of official civil servants in each district is also highly misleading. Their number was small, but, of necessity, they were aided by a multitude of helpers, apart from members of the local gentry. These had to safeguard their own income. Which they did by making people pay as much for ‘their services’ as they could get away with.” [Vries 03:37]
; “The population paid lots of money to all kinds of (semi-)officials and their helpers for which it often did not receive any public goods in return. Such ‘surplus’ payments simply became extra private income for those to whom they were paid.
From a comparative perspective, it is important to note that with the passing of time the importance of all kinds of ‘irregular non-tax income’ – that is excluding regular state property income that became more important again with the passing of time – decreased very sharply in Great Britain and the Dutch Republic, to completely disappear in all of Western Europe with the reforms of government beginning with the French Revolution. In China in contrast, ‘extra-ordinary’, non-tax revenues apparently became more important during the first half of the nineteenth century.” [Vries 15:97]
; “The overarching picture that emerges from the Qing proverbs that she studied, among other things, is that of a bureaucracy riddled with corruption, presiding over a community of defenceless victims. Runners and clerks were almost uniformly despised, but a good bureaucrat apparently was also regarded as an exception rather than the rule. The Confucian ideal of the magistrate as the father and mother of the people, which was frequently trotted out in state commentaries on the bureaucracy, was not exactly reflected in the proverbial wisdom of the day. Ideals showed very little resemblance to reality. These negative images were not just figments of fantasy. Corruption in all forms could and did cause serious distress among the Chinese populace. The fact that, according to conventional wisdom, the bulk of official misconduct went unquestioned and unpunished did not help in improving trust in the administration. Problems were not confined to the civil bureaucracy. Long-term military operations offered splendid opportunities for enrichment, career advancement and embezzlement… For most Chinese, corruption was an oppressive burden that exhausted the population. Dissatisfaction was extremely widespread. It did erupt into a major social conflict at the very end of the eighteenth century with the White Lotus Rebellion, which started as a form of tax unrest and anger about local maladministration and corruption in East Sichuan and spread to the provinces of Hubei and Shaanxi. It was only the first of many uprisings…” [155-6]
• “People in America who turn with disgust from the doings of Tammany Hall, the Boo Hoo Hoff regime, and the Chicago gang, as the lowest possible in political corruption, simply fail to appreciate the real possibilities of corruption as it is seen in China. And here, at least, we have a fairly numerous corps of honest citizenry, a sort of normally neutral vigilante reserve, who step in now and then where and when things become too bad and prevent extension of the more vicious excesses. There is no such reserve of honest citizenry in China, and no sign on the horizon of any in formation for the future. I mention this because the term “corruption,” in speaking of China to persons thinking of the United States, is decidedly ambiguous. The meaning is not the same, certainly, as applied in America to squandered taxes and Tammany nepotism, and in China to personal extortion right and left at the point of a bayonet, with heads chopped off for tardiness in paying or inability to pay.” [Townsend 33:25]
• “Not all taxpayers were affected by these practices in the same way. The rich and powerful households could always rely on their political patronage to protect themselves against local state oppression. Although the imperial court explicitly forbade officials from differentiating tax payers into “big households” (da-hu) and “small households” (xiao-hu), at the local state level this practice became increasingly common over time. In northern Jiangsu during the 1840s, it was observed that “small households” were paying 6000 to 16,000 wen for every shi of rice that they owed in taxes, while “big households” were charged the market rate of 2000 to 3000 wen per shi of rice.
As observed by the scholar-official Feng Guifen (1809-1874), although tax liabilities were
supposed to be computed based on the amount and quality of land each household owned, in practice one’s effective tax rate was always inversely related to his wealth and influence in local society. There were gentry families who owned huge plots of land but “never had the experience of paying any taxes”, while commoner households could end up paying three to four times more taxes than their legal obligations. ” [Sng 14:34]
• Chinese military leaders are usually happy to switch sides for the right price; see section II-5.B and its sources.
• Chinese officials naturally collaborated very closely with illegal drug traders; see section V-4.E.3 and its sources.
• On the prevalence of corruption in contemporary Communist China, see below.
2. • “China itself launches frequent ‘anti-corruption campaigns’. The acute dilemma in such crackdowns is that they are sponsored by the Party… [T]he Party, especially its top echelons, must be seen to retain moral authority after any investigation. So, none of these key persons can be exposed, for fear of damaging the Party’s authority to lead. The mass of people are aware of this dilemma and in consequence are synical about the sincerity of such campaigns when no senior officials are implicated.” [Bond 91:86]
• See the sources below in the on how corruption thrives in Communist China despite its politically-based ‘anti-corruption campaigns’.
• “Given the widespread acts of gift-taking, acceptance of bribes, and extortion by government officials [in 19th century China], it is fair to assume that most corrupt officials went unpunished. For those unlucky few, however, punishment, which was often affected by extralegal factors, could be harsh and swift…The law against corruption was enforced in an arbitrary fashion because if it had been enforced according to the letter nearly all officials would deserve capital punishment.” [Ni 05:9]
3. • “Using clan records, Chang (1962) estimated that in 1880, Qing officials’ ‘‘corruption incomes’’ were as high as 18.5 times their legal incomes. Similar findings emerge from Ni and Pham’s (2006) theoretical estimates using an explicit model. All these studies show that the local tax rate had reached staggeringly high levels. For their own promotion, local officials often transferred part of their incomes to court officials in the central government. For example, Qing minister He Sheng’s assets were estimated to be between several hundred million and one thousand millions taels. ” [Chen 12:55-6]
• “How much all these ‘customary fees’ and other extractions, and plain corruption and extortion, cost the population, we do not know. We only have some indications. A modest estimate on the basis of regional studies, for example, suggests that at the beginning of the nineteenth century they paid two to three times more land tax than Peking received.” [Vries 03:37]
; “Wagner, in his book on Chinese agriculture, makes the following general claim, explicitly referring to the last decades of Qing rule but suggesting things would never have been fundamentally different: ‘Only uninitiated people can believe the fairy tale that land tax would be low in China. In reality fairly high and in many cases even exorbitant sums are exacted.’ He would not be surprised if actual land and poll tax payments would be six times as high as official taxes…
In the eighteenth century it was not uncommon for the taxes collected to be many times the official quotas and for ordinary peasants to be squeezed by the tax collector and the local gentry. We already referred to the habit of collecting ‘wastage allowances’. Here too, possibilities for overcharging abounded. They customarily ranged from 10 to 20 per cent of the official tax due. But in some areas that had risen to as much as 50 per cent of the regular tax quota…”
This is a comment by the same Hong Liangji whom we referred earlier on, written at the end of the eighteenth century: ‘What is really going on is that the magistrate is taking advantage of the authority vested in him by his superiors to extract money from the people: half of what he collects goes to the higher echelons but he keeps the other half to himself.” [Vries 15:153-5]
• “Chang (1962, p. 40) estimated that a circuit intendant could take 75,000 taels of extra income per annum, which made the price paid a very worthwhile investment. Lippit (1978) noted that the powerful Governor-General Li Hong-Zhang, with his hundreds of thousands of acres of land, numerous silk shops and pawn stores amassed through his position in government, was considered by late nineteenth-century contemporaries as the richest man in the world. For another extreme case, He Shen (1750-99), the Grand Secretary of the Qing Court, managed to accumulate a fortune of 80 million taels of silver through corruption over his career, 400,000 times his annual salary! ” [Ni 03:8-9]
• “How severe was the problem of corruption? Zhang calculated that during the first half of the 19th century, an average magistrate fetched an extra 30,000 silver taels annually, on top of his regular salary of 45 to 80 taels and official salary supplement of 400 to 2259 taels. By this estimate, the extralegal income of the 1500 Chinese magistrates (45 million taels) exceeded the amount of tax silver that entered the state coffers each year (around 40 million taels in the 1840s). This is before we consider the extralegal income of other officials. According to Ni and Van (2006), the aggregate extralegal income of Qing officials, which peaked in 1850, consumed 22% of China’s agricultural output in 1873.
While one may question the accuracy of these estimates, contemporary observations suggest that corruption was indeed severe. The French missionary Pe`re Amiot noted in 1782 that corruption was so deep-rooted in the Qing bureaucracy that “it is rare among the Chinese to find anyone in an official post who does not enrich himself” (Park, 1997, p. 999). Chester Holcombe (1842-1912), an American diplomat, commented that,
‘The grave point of weakness and danger in the Chinese financial system, or lack of system, lies, so far as the government revenues are concerned, in the free opportunities which are afforded for extortion, illegal exactions from the people, and every form of officer robbery. It is safe to say that no tax is collected and paid over to the treasury in the exact amount stipulated by law. The subject invariably pays more than he ought, and the Emperor as invariably receives less than his due. And if the exact total of all sums collected for public purposes from every source in any year could be compared with the corresponding total actually devoted to public purposes in the same period of time, the enormous divergence between the two sums would astonish the world’.” [Sng 14:14]
4. • “Because [magistrates’ clerks] were involved in such tasks as drafting reports, preparing tax records, issuing warrants, and filing documents, they had many opportunities for manipulating business to their personal advantage, the temptation being strong because they received no remuneration apart from fees and the proceeds of the corruption they indulged in… [C]lerks and other minor employees in the yamen were automatically regarded by the people as corrupt and predatory, and this attitude is reflected in popular literature…
[Magistrates’ runners] were thus largely dependent on fees and what they could squeeze out of people in the course of their duties. Runners sometimes imprisoned people in their own homes to extract money from them. The police were especially notorious and though to be hand in glove with thieves. Before they would investigate a theft they would first demand from the victim money for travel and subsistence and for the services of informers, as well as a tip for themselves.” [Dawson 78:49-50]
• “In their exemption of privileged gangsters from attention, the police in China are considerably worse than those in certain American cities. The Chinese courts, naturally, are incomparably worse than anything in American cities, acknowledging the full revelations of the Seabury report and everything else that has come to light. They are worse than anything the average American can imagine. Our courts let off powerfully financed racketeers and fraudulent bankers rather commonly, but in the main our failures of justice fall down more from mushy sentimentality, credence in quack alienists, dumb juries, and public soft-heartedness than from actual malfeasance of officials. The same causes do not assist criminals in China – certainly not sentimentality. There bribery is present in practically every case in native Chinese courts, except to some extent in Shanghai, Peiping and Tientsin, where it is still wholesale, though not as bad as elsewhere. Bribery is a polite term. Judgments are bought and sold like beans or flour. And, of course, the Chinese police are open to wholesale bribery, whereas in civilized lands, bad as conditions are in some places, a considerable number of the police are incorruptible, while public opinion operates to make them all wary of too flagrant graft. In most respects there is no comparison at all between law enforcement in America and China. Anywhere in America the police will answer a call for help in cases of robbery or assault. They will not in China.” [Townsend 33:231-2]
• “I’ll give you two examples that will show the direct impact of corruption in China because corruption is related to shortage of supplies of certain services or goods. China’s medical facilities are very crowded – the good ones. So if someone who gets sick wants to see a really good doctor at a good facility, then they have to pay a bribe. Another area where they have to pay bribe would be trying to get into good schools because principals have a lot of power. So if they pay a principal some money, they can get a spot…”
• www.npr.org/2017/10/24/559889548/a-look-at-how-chinas-anti-corruption-campaign-has-affected-ordinary-citizens
5. • “Among the bureaucracies of history, the Chinese has been distinguished by the way in which the twin institutions of “squeeze” and nepotism reinforced each other. The former operated through forms of politeness rather than secrecy. Junior officials in the course of their duties gave their superiors customary “gifts”. But like all prices in old China, the amount of such a gift resulted from the working out of a personal relationship. The squeeze system was no more cut and dried than any other part of the man-to-man bargaining which pervaded Chinese life. The extralegal sums which passed between officials were larger but no different in kind from the small commissions extracted until only recently from every money transaction by underpaid houseboys.” [Fairbank 76:116]
• “Formal government was by far the most profitable, although the salaries of the imperial civil service were negligible. The incumbents were expected to supply the deficiency through customary exactions known as “squeeze”. The Chinese word for squeeze, k’o-lo, appears in a Ch’ing dynasty dictionary of administrative terms compiled by clerks for the use of clerks, with the following gloss: “To squeeze public funds and put them into one’s own purse.”… A district magistrate, for example, a 7th rank official, averaged 70,000 Taels of squeeze per annum…
But squeeze itself was subject to squeeze by higher officials in a chain of confiscation reaching all the way up to the emperor himself. It was said that the Hoppo, or adminstrator of Canton the customs, had to pay in bribes the amount equalling the net profits of of his first year in office in order to obtain it, the profits of his second year to keep it, and those of his third year to drop it and provide for himself.” [Stover 76:112]
• See section II-6.B and its sources ([Townsend 33:5] and [Smith 94:282]).
6. • “What made the officials in Ming and Qing China susceptible to the temptations of corruption is the combination of low salary and the concentrated power of office. By the time of the Qing, fee-taking and corruption made salary a negligible portion of income for an official because there were ample opportunities to collect rents. Individual local government officials served not only as administrators of public affairs but also as tax collectors and judges of local courts. The multiple roles assumed by the individual officials made checks on his power difficult.” [Ni 05:6-7]
• “Low fiscal revenue in the Ming and Qing
dynasties led to underpaid and understaffed local bureaucracy with excessive power, which resulted in institutionalised corruption. Local officials created many rent-seeking opportunities by targeting traders and manufacturers in the course of granting business licenses, collecting stall taxes, forced selling of official titles at high prices, or even making up false allegation to seize properties.” [Chen 12:55]
• “This left very little for official salaries, but without the military and court expenditures there would have existed no imperial establishment to which the service of officials would have been attracted. Officials were therefore positively encouraged to practice squeeze by way of unsuring the political control of wealth outside the orbit of direct control.” [Stover 76:113]
7. • “Commercial wealth may have also accounted for the proportions of new men from such populous provinces as Anhwei and Kwangtung. Increasingly generous examination quotas were now specially reserved for the merchants as a group. In addition, degrees and ranks were now opened to purchase on a far greater scale than before, and provinces such as Anhwei and Kwangtung were high among the beneficiaries of this practice. Merchants may well have been among the leading purchases.” [Fairbank 57:267]
• “The system of giving roughly half of the important government jobs to Han and roughly half to Manchus, of course, was very favourable for the Manchus, who were less than 2 per cent of China’s total population. So the role of ascription and favouritism definitely was not negligible…
Selling official positions – and ranks, titles and chances to get a position – was supposed to be exceptional. It was legal, although it was masked as a reward for the fact that one had given a contribution” [Vries 15:271]
; “In principle, only people who had passed at least one exam were qualified for a job as an official. Their number was huge and continued to grow, as did the number of those who bought degrees and titles… The fact that the number of people directly buying an office increased so sharply, to at times even becoming the majority, will not have improved quality either. What it very probably did do was increase feelings of frustration by those who had passed exams, even when they ended up earning a good income as official or ‘sub-official’. ” [273]
• “[D]uring [1646 and 1802], 140 members of the same group of families entered the civil service by purchase of degrees (a practice that, having been legally sanctioned during the Ch’ing, eventually became a serious abuse).” [Bodde 91:219-20]
• “A classic case of an historical figure who did not take the examinations was the poet Li Po, who spent his in early years in Taoism, knight-errantry, and drinking, rather than Confucian studies. But Feng Meng-lung gives him a splendid victory over the learned Hanlin Academicians in his story called Li Po, God in Exile… When asked why he did not take the examinations [Li Po in the story] said that the government was in complete chaos, and that one’s examination results depend on bribery and underhand dealings. The reason why he amused himself with poetry and wine was simply to avoid being insulted by blind examiners. However, he was eventually persuaded to take the examination… Despite his superabundant genius, he was failed by the high officials who examined his papers, who said he was only fit to grind their ink or pull off their boots. But… [he proved he was actually smarter by translating a letter to the emperor they couldn’t, and got revenge on them].” [Dawson 78:256-7]
• “Western writers for long assumed that the Chinese examinations were a really democratic institution, providing opportunity for the intelligent peasant to rise in the world. In fact, however, this seems to have happened rather seldom. The many years of assiduous study required for the examinations were a barrier which no ordinary peasant could surmount.” [Fairbank 76:45-6]
8. • “Furthermore, the tax collection process was akin to tax-farming in the Ming Dynasty. ‘‘Because the Ming tax system was quota-based rather than universal. . .What a tax collector did after his collections had met the quota was a matter of discretion’’. As a result, ‘The numerous business tax stations, fish duty stations, and other governmental offices still employed hosts of unpaid patrolmen and scribes who harassed itinerant traders… Not infrequently, merchants were forced to sell goods to the government at prices that bankrupted them.
Therefore, ‘‘Corruption was built into it (at least in the modern Western sense of the term) by the custom of tax-farming’’. Apparently, the situation had not changed much in the Qing dynasty…” [Chen 12:55-6]
• See the [Townsend 33:232] citation in section II-8.B.
9. • See section II-7.C and its sources.
10. • “The idea to create a network of hospices in counties and districts was abandoned by the Qing government because of fraud and corruption.” [Vries 15:197]
11. • “Huang (1974, p. 318) made an interesting observation that the late imperial Chinese state was unwilling to expand its postal relay system, which in theory would have facilitated the flow of information between the capital and individual regions, for fear of creating more opportunities for state agents to exploit the local population under the pretext of provisioning the postal stations. ” [Sng 14:40]
12. • See the [Townsend 33:64-5] and [Parfitt 12:160] citations in the sources of section II-3.
• “It is not easy to possess one’s self of full details of the working of any regular Chinese charity, but enough has been observed during such a special crisis as the great famine, to make it certain that the deepest distress of the people is no barrier whatever to the most shameful peculation on the part of officials entrusted with the disbursement of funds for relief.” [Smith 94:192]
13. • Prevalent corruption in China continues today. ‘Anti-corruption campaigns’ are thinly veiled political purges. Most officials convicted of corruption get their jobs back. Articles:
Why Corruption Is Here To Stay In China
• www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/china-corruption_us_58c866b2e4b01c029d7731ea
Growth and Corruption in China
• www.chinacenter.net/2012/china_currents/11-2/growth-and-corruption-in-china/
What China’s Anti-Corruption Campaign Is Really About
• www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/04/xi-jinping-china-corruption-political-culture/389787/
How Deng Xiaoping Helped Create a Corrupt China
• www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/opinion/bao-tong-how-deng-xiaoping-helped-create-a-corrupt-china.html
Crackdown in China: Worse and Worse
• www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/04/21/crackdown-in-china-worse-and-worse/
Understanding Chinese President Xi’s anti-corruption campaign
• theconversation.com/understanding-chinese-president-xis-anti-corruption-campaign-86396
• Videos:
How Corrupt Is China?
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=v98rhzyXcGw
China’s Killer Corruption Problem | China Uncensored
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCxiDv7G3Co
Corruption in China – part 2 [Most officials convicted of corruption get their jobs back]
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_09r4Tge2Q
China: so corrupt even the police are protesting
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT4v3m99IEA
Pattberg: Corruption in China
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUK_TcODci4
140,000 Chinese Officials Investigated for Corruption in 2011
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHHgvG7tTNI
• “Currently, the central government was attempting to revitalize the area through funding and privatization efforts, but widespread graft was seeing to it that progress was slow. A pervasive lack of business ethics had also scared away many foreign direct investors. Land deeds had been transferred without the relevant foreign partner’s knowledge, new plants had gone up only for managers to siphon off funds and establish identical plants across town—and that was if the managers stuck around. There were several cases where they simply emptied the accounts and headed for the hills. Bank managers who allowed for the total-sum withdrawals headed for the hills with them. Foreign investors had discovered that attempting to remove vorrupt managers often led to strikes and riots. Investigations on behalf of the country’s anti-corruption bureau were possible, but necessitated bribes.” [Parfitt 12:182]
; “[W]herever there are gangsters in Taiwan, there are sure to be politicians. Although members of the KMT aren’t the only ones tainted by “black gold”, the local term for collusion between government and crime, they do tend to dominate. Mobsters use their pull to get candidates elected. Once in office, politicians then pay the mob off or endorse their businesses. Each of Taiwan’s major gangs runs a construction operation, and bid-rigging is common when government projects are put out to tender. Such an arrangement can have fatal consequences: companies are notorious for skimping on material. There have been post-earthquake discoveries of apartment building walls filled with pop bottles and plastic pails, and some of Taipei’s metro stations were found to have walls that were hollow. According to The Economist, nearly a third of all infrastructure development in Taiwan is lost in kickbacks.” [372-3]
• ““Guanxi”…is usually translated as “social connections” or “relationships”. But these don’t tell the whole picture. Guanxi is the key to getting anything done in China—the single most important factor for success in the country…
The upshot [of “Chinese society controlled by the capricious rules of those in power”] is that the Chinese have always relied on working around the system to get things done. This meant using connections and making deals behind the scenes (using bribes if necessary)…
It’s no secret that foreign business people in China need to cultivate guanxi as quickly as possible. Western business people usually learn pretty quickly that going through the “official” channels to navigate the Chinese bureaucracy is an exercise in futility.
Even something as seemingly easy as getting an application rubber-stamped can be a long and frustrating process without the proper guanxi. In fact, China’s vast bureaucracy is virtually un-navigable without the right guanxi.
On the other hand, when dealing with anything requiring government approval, the people with right connections can get around virtually any official regulation. To get things done, you need a Chinese partner who has the right guanxi (one who you can also trust….a big question mark). For instance, it’s common for business people operating in a certain region to hire a relative of a powerful local official to grease the wheels of commerce…
For instance, after a businessman uses his network to get introduced to a local official, he’ll typically start the relationship by treating him to a fancy dinner… Afterwards, the businessman might even take the official to a karaoke bar, where additional “favors” are doled out. A traditional invite often included the phrase “yan jiu yan jiu” (literally “smoke alcohol smoke alcohol”) indicating that the guest will also leave with parting gifts (expensive cigarettes and liquor)…
For instance, it’s commonly accepted that you can get your kid accepted into the most prestigious universities with the right guanxi. I recall reading a story about how a certain small high school in Nanjing only had three seniors accepted into university; none of the three was even close to the top of their class.”
• www.china-mike.com/chinese-culture/understanding-chinese-mind/guanxi/
————
F. Whites’ representative governments are stronger and more effective than China’s despotic regimes.
One might think that the despotic nature of Chinese government, with its emphasis on hierarchy and obedience, might mean greater organization and cooperation, but the reverse is actually true. Despotic governments tend to be weakest and least effective, while governments of a well represented, free citizenry tend to be strongest. A representative government is embedded within its nation, and citizens support its taxes and programs because they trust that it is working in their interests [1]. Willing cooperation by civic-minded patriots is more effective than forced ‘cooperation’ by exploited subjects. Despotic states are effective at obstruction and destruction, but not at creation [2]. China’s regimes could only push so hard; Chinese history is an endless series of rebellions [3]. China’s imperial government actually grew weaker over time; by ~1800 it failed to provide even basic infrastructure and services [4]. Since medieval times Europe has provided more welfare programs and relief to its poor, even as a portion of GDP [5]. With White technology China is wealthier today, but allows its environment to be disastrously degraded [6].
For many centuries, White governments have managed superior legal and judicial systems, superior military, superior infrastructure, superior financial systems, superior stimulation of industry and trade, superior education systems, and superior welfare programs (section V-3.E-K). White governments are a product of more trusting, cooperative White people.
1. • “Despotic power concerns the range of actions that rulers can undertake without resorting to routine, institutionalised negotiation with civil society groups. It basically concerns the extent to which rulers can do as they please with their subjects. This should be distinguished from ‘infrastructural’ or ‘organic power’, which can be defined as the capacity of rulers to actually penetrate civil society and to implement political decisions logistically throughout the realm, which, of course, always implies that the state disposes of a great amount of knowledge.
We are talking about two quite different kinds of power that tend to stand in an inverse relationship to each other: as a rule, states with strong despotic powers have been infrastructurally weak and vice versa. Only a state that is infrastructurally or organically strong will be able to implement its policies and thus (help to) change an economy. That was the case in Britain where the state was not a force separated from and so to say confronting society but where it clearly was embedded in society and where state and society bargained with each other. In that respect, the existence of Parliament in particular, where all those with a certain clout in the country could bargain in an institutionalised setting and with results that were regarded by all as binding, at least in principle, must have been of enormous importance. It was an enormous advantage as compared with the situation in China, where the state even when it was functioning well according to its standards – which it mostly did not after 1780 – was not embedded and measures announced by the rulers might lack wide support.” [Vries 13:378-9]
; “Britain’s government had far more tax income and far more other income [than China] because British people were willing to support government and lend money to it… The country had a strong sense of national identity, unity and commitment, and relatively inclusive institutions.” [403]
; “As in the case of China the strength of an economy need not be mirrored in the strength of its state. Pre-revolutionary France presents a good example of the apparent paradox already noticed by Montesquieu and expressed by him in this ‘general rule’: ‘One can raise higher taxes, in proportion to the liberty of the subjects; and one is forced to moderate them to the degree that servitude increases.’ In their book on fiscal crises, liberty and representative government in Western Europe in the early modern era, Norberg and Hoffman point at that same apparent paradox: ‘In the absolutist states, Spain and France, taxation was relatively light’ whereas in the states with strong representative institutions, the Netherlands and eighteenth-century England, ‘taxation was extraordinarily heavy.’ And they come up with, basically, an identical explanation: ‘In the end, liberty was a necessary precondition for the emergence of a strong state, a state of wealth and power.’
Governments like those of ‘absolutist’ France or ‘despotic’ China during the early modern era may look impressively powerful because they were not constrained by a system of checks and balances. But they apparently found it much harder to collect substantial amounts of money or to even overspend without getting in trouble than governments that operated in an institutional setting, where they could somehow be held responsible for their actions, and included more people in their policy making. The more a state is embedded, the more ‘infrastructural strength’ it can mobilize, whereas a state that is despotically strong, almost by definition, so to say, stands ‘opposed’ to society, therefore lacks support and in the end is rather ‘weak’. Embedded states thank their ‘infrastructural’ power to the existence of certain channels via which (powerful) members of society can effectively make their voices heard. States with representative governments can manage to collect huge amounts of taxes with relatively little effort and they can even overspend structurally, because those governments can be checked by their ‘power-holding’ subjects and are basically trusted by them.” [Vries 15:225-6]
; “As we have seen, the state scarcely penetrated below the level of the district. As such, China’s rulers almost entirely lacked institutional, China-wide structures or resources that might have helped them in building a Chinese nation… Unlike in Western Europe, there was no tradition of institutionalized bargaining – especially over taxes and warfare – between central government and representatives of various societal groups that were acknowledged as such and could claim rights and privileges. That made it hard to mobilize ‘the people’ or ‘the elites’ for a national cause…” [414]
; “To begin with there is the unmistakable fact that in Qing China there was less financial and legal sophistication than in early modern Britain. Especially when it comes to what one may call ‘the interface of market and government’. In the eighteenth century it did not have a national bank, a consolidated national debt and formal and refined property laws. During the economic Ancien Régime that was not a real problem. With the passing of time, however, it became one. The importance of these kinds of institutions for industrialisation should not be played down. We already referred to the fact that the market for labour, especially long-term labour, was fairly restricted and did not include women. Interest rates were structurally high, which is normally regarded as a symptom of an inefficient market for money…” [Vries 03:29-30]
; “[B]ehind this rosy, official façade lurks a much less rosy reality, which we cannot pass over here. In discussing taxes in Qing China we do not only have to differentiate between those tax payments that found their way to Peking and those non-statutory surtaxes that were paid as local or provincial tax. We must also realise that in addition to the official taxes and allowances the civil servants were able to collect, they also exacted an endless series of additional payments, either with or without the approval of Peking that knew that the official taxes and allowances, and salaries, were inadequate. Simply counting the number of official civil servants in each district is also highly misleading. Their number was small, but, of necessity, they were aided by a multitude of helpers, apart from members of the local gentry. These had to safeguard their own income. Which they did by making people pay as much for ‘their services’ as they could get away with. How much all these ‘customary fees’ and other extractions, and plain corruption and extortion, cost the population, we do not know. We only have some indications. A modest estimate on the basis of regional studies, for example, suggests that at the beginning of the nineteenth century they paid two to three times more land tax than Peking received. With the weakening of central government the situation only worsened. Even when government functioned at its best the problems of really and efficiently tapping the wealth of a country as big as China with primitive pre-industrial means were immense. In fact, there was no real alternative to taxing lightly, working with local elites, and hoping everything went well.” [37-8]
2. • “The Chinese system entangled society in a ball of string more than it hammered with a mailed fist. This may not have been how things seemed to individuals entrapped by the emperor’s whim, like the poets under the Ming emperor Hung-wu who dared make no reference to natural calamity for fear he would take it as a hint at his tyranny, or his officials who took the precaution each morning before setting out for the court audience of bidding their families a final farewell (Dawson 1972:240). Any individual official or merchant might find himself brought low. Ch’ien Lung’s favourite minister, Ho Shen, came to be worth $U.S. 1,500 million (in dollars of the early 1950s), but the next emperor drove him to his death (Murphey 1954:357). On the other hand it was beyond any emperor’s power to humble the entire scholar-gentry class. Emperor and élite were bound together by mutual need. Neither was there a totalitarian apparatus capable of controlling the everyday life of the peasants or town dwellers, who were exploited and neglected but not systematically repressed (Moore 1967:173). Quite capable of overawing the populace, putting down local revolts, and torturing, executing or hounding its own officials to their deaths, the system proved weak when faced with a major challenge.” [Jones 87:206-7]
• The Chinese regime’s propensity to impede and restrict people’s organizations and activities is reviewed in section II-8.C and its sources.
3. • See section II-6.C and its sources.
4. • “I provide historical evidence to demonstrate that the contraction of the [Chinese] regime’s fiscal capacity led to a gradual and sustained reduction in the supply of state-provided public goods. This development became evident in the second half of the 18th century, and it predated the military and socio-economic troubles which kicked in after 1796. The nature and timing of these spending cuts strongly suggests that persistent fiscal problems on the revenue side affected the economy adversely, through the under-provision of public goods that protected property rights. Before the modern West began taking steps to open up China by force, the Celestial Empire was already sinking under its own weight. ” [Sng 14:5-6]
; “The remaining of this section presents historical evidence to show that state finances in Qing China deteriorated over the course of the 18th century as corruption rose in the face of population growth, in a manner that is consistent with the predictions of Results 5, 6, and 7.
Falling tax revenues. Using archival as well as published primary records of the Qing dynasty, I have reconstructed the the Qing state’s tax revenues between 1650 and 1850 to analyze how it evolved over time. Result 7 predicts that economic expansion could hurt a regime plagued by severe agency problems. This is consistent with the pattern that we see in Figure 3. Although the prosperous age of the High Qing did not end until late in the 18th century, in real terms, the Qing state’s tax revenues reached a peak during the early 1700s, and fell steadily from there.
The Qing state’s fiscal decline is even more striking in per capita terms. As Figure 3c illustrates, if we take basic standard of living to represent an annual consumption of 331 shi of grain per capita, the Qing state’s tax revenue would be sufficient to feed and clothe 9.6% of the Chinese population in 1685, 7.7% in 1724, 5.4% in 1753, 4.1% in 1791 and 2.3% in 1848. By this measure, state extraction ratio fell by three-quarters in slightly over one-and-a-half century.
Classical Chinese historiography blamed a succession of increasingly incompetent rulers for China’s woes in the 19th century. However, as the evidence above illustrates, the steady contraction of the Qing state’s fiscal capacity began before Jiaqing and Daoguang—the “weak” rulers of the early 19th century—were even born…
Rising corruption. Only anecdotal evidence is available to inform us about the trend of corruption in late imperial China, but there is an abundance of it. In line with the hypothesis, it is widely observed that corruption worsened over time in Qing China, and it was the have-nots in the society that bore the brunt of growing maladministration.
Major corruption scandals took place infrequently during the reigns of Shunzhi (1644-61), Kangxi (1662-1722), and Yongzheng (1723-35). By the Qianlong’s reign (1736-95), they became a regular occurrence. Out of the 139 people who served the Qianlong emperor as provincial governors or governors-general, 30 of them, or over 20% of the total, were implicated in corruption scandals. In 1799, Heshen, the grand councilor and the de facto prime minister, was famously impeached and sentenced to death. An imperial censor lamented in 1803 that even county government clerks were dressing so luxuriously that it was no longer possible to tell their status from their appearance. The scholar Hong Liangji (1746-1809) remarked that when he was young, magistrates usually retired with enough to provide for his family for generations. When he grew older, that surplus had increased tenfold as corruption worsened…
Reduction in public goods provision. Result 8 shows that persistent fiscal weaknesses could undermine the economy as the state becomes increasingly unable to pay for essential public goods that protect property rights. This was the fate that China suffered on the eve of the Industrial Revolution. By the late 18th century, the signs were clear that the once proud Qing dynasty no longer had the ability to contain foreign threats and mitigate social tensions in local societies.
Table 3 [showing state expenditures in 1766 for military, civilian administration, Yellow River conservancy, imperial post stations, etc.] provides a glimpse of the Qing state’s role in the economy of late imperial China. It confirms what historians have long observed—that due to its small budget, the Qing state adopted a minimalist and largely hands-off approach in the provision of local public goods and the promotion of economic growth. With the notable exception of trade along the Grand Canal, most long distance trade was carried out among regions either well served by natural inland waterways or along the coast. Land transportation, which would require investment in infrastructure, appears to have been underdeveloped.
Proponents of the “Big Push” theory may argue that industrialization in China was hampered because the Qing state was too weak to coordinate investments across sectors and push the country out of the no-industrialization trap—for example, it did too little to invest in education or basic infrastructure such as roads, harbors, and (later) railways. Even if we reject this strong form view that the state has a direct role to play in promoting economic development, and judge the Qing dynasty entirely on the weaker criteria of a night watchman state, there is ample reason for us to doubt its ability to deliver a consistent performance in this role. Since military and civilian administrations together accounted for more than 80% of the government’s silver expenditure, a sustained fiscal squeeze was bound to hit the two areas—and, subsequently, the Qing state’s ability to maintain peace and social order—hard. ..
Local Administration. Even at the height of Qing power, the Qing society was “under-governed”. In 1724, there were only 1360 counties, or one county for nearly 150,000 Chinese. This was woefully inadequate, as the county was the level of administration that dealt directly with ordinary people. The situation only got worse over time, as the Chinese population more than doubled between 1700 and 1850 while the numbers of counties scarcely increased.
Where the judiciary process was concerned, the magistrate was the only imperial officer in the county administration authorized to preside over court proceedings. The weak presence of the state in the Chinese society explains China’s traditional reliance on kinship-based organizations to promote law-abiding behaviors (i.e. prevent cheating and free riding), as well as its dependence on the local elite to mediate disputes in local communities. As the economy expanded and geographic mobility increased over the course of the 18th century, there were signs that this system of relying overwhelmingly on informal institutions to sustain cooperative behaviors was put under increasing strain. By the 1760s, vagrancy had become a serious social concern, as the society felt increasingly threatened by rootless people unbounded by community ties…
As Figure 5 illustrates, social order was gradually restored in China during the second half of the 17th century with the establishment of Qing rule over China. However, commoner rebellions reappeared in the 1770s and the frequency of occurrence picked up over time, culminating in the Taiping movement of the mid 19th century. In line with what we have seen so far, it was fiscal decline that predated the uptick in social and political instability, not the other way round.” [30-8]
• “There existed a huge difference between official payments to government and actual payments made by the populace to all kinds of people in compensation for being ‘governed’ and ‘administrated’, just as there, as we will see, existed a huge difference between official expenditure by government and actual expenditure for public good and services… The consequences, in the end, were not positive, not for central government and not for the population. Basically what we see is something like a ‘worst of both worlds’ scenario with people paying a lot and government receiving little. Central government could easily be confronted with a disaffected population that felt exploited and victim of all kinds of corruption from which government as such did not ‘profit’. Qing China in the very long eighteenth century, in various respects, was quite weak ‘infrastructurally’ as a state, in particular when it came to making long-term investments and their maintenance. Central government did not have much grip on society and in many respects lacked the capacity to actually penetrate it and logistically implement political decisions throughout the realm. The population paid lots of money to all kinds of (semi-)officials and their helpers for which it often did not receive any public goods in return. Such ‘surplus’ payments simply became extra private income for those to whom they were paid. ” [Vries 15:96-7]
; “In the nineteenth century, China’s transport system over land as well as over water deteriorated. Scarcity of materials like wood and iron played their part in this, in particular in the case of overland transport. But the weakness of central government is also at least partly to blame.” [141]
; “At the end of the eighteenth century even the façade began to crumble. The heyday of the Qing dynasty was drawing to a close. The nineteenth century overall is a period of crisis, especially after 1840. In Peking and in the provinces corruption and mismanagement were growing; social unrest led to uprisings. Especially the ruling of various of the newly conquered territories cost a great deal of money and effort; budget deficits and government debts started to accrue; the government started to suffer from a lack of resources with which to carry out its usual tasks. The famous granaries were more and more depleted, big irrigation projects fell into disarray, floods could no longer be prevented, transport over rivers, canals, and roads deteriorated. In the 1820s the trade balance started to show a deficit, which weakened the position of the government even further and had a negative effect on the economy…
The problem now more than ever was not so much ‘Oriental despotism’ as ‘undergovernment’. The Qing regime had never been a totalitarian regime, with the passing of the nineteenth century it was slowly but surely becoming weaker; anarchy and chaos became a real threat… As compared to governments in the West, China’s rulers became powerless and poor. They lacked the means to play a more active role in the economy and support industrialisation.” [Vries 03:37-8]
; “The [Chinese] state apparatus over time became even weaker and government in the nineteenth century often was not even able to fulfil the absolute minimum of what one might expect from any government. Many of the emerging problems were connected to the extremely weak financial basis government had. The country’s bureaucracy was very seriously understaffed and under-paid, and often under-qualified for the more technical parts of their job. The bulk of routine work, because of that under-staffing and under-funding, had to be left to clerks and runners, who officially were not in government service and were not paid from government funds but by their direct employer or more often by the populace. The number of soldiers who were actually fit for war was surprisingly small; their payment, training and discipline were bad and getting worse. In the end, for the ordinary populace, China’s state began to present the worst of all worlds. Officially, its subjects were lightly taxed. In reality they had to pay [via corruption] very substantial amounts of money to a state – or rather to its official and semi-official representatives – that increasingly was unable to deliver public goods like maintaining the granary system, supporting its landless peasants, taking care of infrastructure and providing security.” [Vries 13:405]
• “During the Qing (Manchu) dynasty (1644-1911), the Chinese government ceased almost entirely to provide any kind of public services. It did not provide the usual elements of infrastructure necessary for economic development, such as standardized weights, commercial law, roads, and police.” [Mokyr 90:234]
• “For the populace the bargain was a poor one. The Chinese paid 24% of GNP to 2% of their number in return for defense and coordination of irrigation and flood control. No other important services were provided, no civil policing for instance. Villages had to keep their own watch…” [Jones 87:209]
5. • Vries briefly reviews European welfare policies ~1600-1900 and counters ridiculous propaganda that China provided more poor relief than Europe, in [Vries 15:193-204].
; “All these figures provide us with the opportunity to actually try and compare Chinese expenditures on poor relief with those in Britain to find out whether Wong’s claims hold water. They apparently do not. There are various ways of showing that. I here just endorse the estimates by Lindert, who makes it quite plausible – using information from publications by Wong and Will – that the grain from china’s famous granaries that was provided to the population during the eighteenth century in terms of money never amounted to as much as 0.5 per cent of China’s GDP. To be more precise: he claims it would have amounted to 0.36 per cent in 1735, and, according to another estimate, 0.17 to 0.26 per cent over the period 1735–80. At the end of the eighteenth century the system began to function less well and from then on the percentages will certainly have been even lower. According to an estimate made by Will and Wong themselves, granary-system costs in the eighteenth century accounted for 0.5 to 2 per cent of annually generated government revenues, which they estimate at 60 to 80 million taels per year. In the highest estimate that would be 2 per cent of 80 million taels, which is 1.6 million taels. According to Lillian Li the total amount of famine relief from the early Qing through the Daoguang period, may in an extremely high estimate have amounted to 446 million taels. As such the sum looks impressive – on average per year it is relatively tiny, roughly the equivalent of £1 million. Deng, who is very positive about Qing famine relief, estimates that it in total, in terms of money, amounted to some 48 million taels over the period 1666–1877, roughly the equivalent of some £75,000 per year. For Britain’s poor relief we are talking about far higher orders of magnitude, in absolute terms as well as in percentages of GDP. In the period 1800–50, poor rate receipts hovered between £5.3 million at the lowest and £9.3 million, gross government between income £39 million at the lowest and £79 million at the highest. The number of people who received relief in work houses for the poor was very substantial. In 1776, there were 1,970 such houses in England and Wales, excluding London, capable of housing almost 90,000 persons. In 1850, the number of people receiving relief in workhouses (123,000) or elsewhere (885,696) amounted to 5.7 per cent of the population. To show how active the Qing state was, the German author Mathias Heinrich points out that up until 1850, it established 362 poor houses and 567 orphanages and then claims that in the year 1850 there would have been one ‘national’ poor house per 1.1 million people and one ‘national’ orphanage per 694,000 people. Historians of social welfare in Western europe in the early modern era will not be impressed. The idea to create a network of hospices in counties and districts was abandoned by the Qing government because of fraud and corruption.
In an effort to show how irrelevant poor relief and charity were as a source of income transfer in the Dutch Republic, De Vries and Van der Woude come up with the estimate that at the very beginning of the nineteenth century, in total, would have amounted to ‘only’ eight to ten million guilders. That would be some four to five guilders, that is, the equivalent of some 40 to 50 grams of silver, per capita. GDP per capita per year at the time was estimated at about 120 guilders. So we are discussing a transfer of money to the poor of over 3–4 per cent of Dutch GDP. This clearly is not less than the Chinese government spent on relief via its granaries or other means. Other figures too point in the direction of quite substantial poor relief in what is now called the Netherlands. In 1807 as well as in 1817, the number of people receiving poor relief was more than 10 per cent of total population.” [195-7]
6. • See section II-5.B and its sources.
END Sources of sections I-II
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III-IV. Introduction: Whites are more explorative and creative than Chinese, while Chinese have higher memory-based intelligence.
In section III, I will review the bases and characteristics of memory-based and creative/analytic intelligence. In section IV, I will review the evidence that Whites to a greater degree have characteristics of the latter, and Chinese of the former.
A. Superior White explorativity and creativity; Superior Chinese memory and skill.
Whites and Chinese developed different abilities based on the crucial difference in their environments: the greater general resource availability but more challenging agricultural conditions in Europe (section I). Whites became more curious and explorative, more proficient at acquiring and analyzing information and resources to develop them creatively; while Chinese became more proficient at skillfully utilizing the resources at hand to attain maximum efficiency. Whites are superior at discovering information, determining principles of cause-effect, forming creative ideas, and making sound judgments based on general knowledge; while Chinese are superior at learning known data and principles, applying them to calculation, and developing academic and motor skills.
B. Whites have more discrete and abstract perception; Chinese have more concrete and detailed perception.
A key difference between White and Chinese intelligence lies in how discretely and abstractly they perceive sensings and memory. Whites focus more on the objects in their environment, viewing them more discretely and perceiving their basic characteristics more abstractly. Chinese perceive scenes more concretely and fully, in greater detail, hence memorizing imagery more keenly. Whites perceive objects more discretely because they more actively consider (and do) various actions upon them, and more abstractly because they more creativity consider substituting them in alternative contexts in which they could be utilized for varying purposes. Chinese perceive and memorize situations more fully so that they will be able to more readily and precisely match an encountered situation to a reference situation in memory, finely distinguished from similar such memories, to more accurately predict an outcome and/or determine an optimum course of action to obtain a desired result.
C. Creative/analytic and memory-based intelligence are broadly correlated, despite being inversely related at high levels.
Of course, both Whites and Chinese can create ideas and develop skills, i.e. they both have creative/analytic and memory-based intelligence. Creativity depends upon good memory and memory-based skills, and so naturally these abilities are broadly correlated across races and individuals; the inverse relationship I point to existing only among relatively intelligent people. To illustrate by analogy: Agility and power-lifting abilities are broadly correlated across people, both of them based on general bodily strength and various fitness and health factors. But these abilities are inversely correlated among athletes who are good at both, varying on the factor of bulk of muscularity. Creativity and memory-based intelligence are also broadly correlated across people, both of them based on general memory strength and various mental faculties. But they are inversely correlated among smart people who are good at both, varying on the factor of abstractness of perception.
Sourcing note: Section III is mostly my original work, based on many years of thought on the subject. During the course of recent research I have come across ‘collaboration’ of some of my ideas which I could append as “sources”, but this would be misleading. I prefer to let my ideas in this theory section stand on their own.
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III. The nature of intelligence, explorativity, and creativity.
III-1. The nature of memory-based intelligence.
A. Applications of memory-based intelligence.
Memory-based intelligence utilizes keen memory of information already experienced or learned to determine actions to obtain a goal. Such memory includes data required for actions (e.g. a name, a number, a location); discriminating details of reference situations needed to predict a given situation accurately; exact scenarios in which certain, precise courses of action have yielded a goal; and retention of objects/data in ‘working memory’ that enables mental manipulation and combination and/or comparison of them. Keen memory is facilitated by persistent study and focus on tasks. While all intelligence is based on good memory, much intelligence is not creative. Visuo-spatial ability, the ability to mentally ‘project’ considered actions upon objects, can be a tool of creativity, but this depends on one’s motives for such considerations. If one is simply following directions or performing routine tasks, for example, there is little creative about it.
B. Keen memory facilitates calculation, as well as recognition.
Memory-based intelligence is more than just accumulation of facts. Strong memory enables discernment of subtle changes and patterns, because memorized detail of antecedent phenomena can be better compared to subsequent phenomena (e.g. emotional cues of a human face, patterns of a matrices series). Strong memory can more precisely match a situation with a previously experienced reference situation in memory (RSM), thus distinguishing similar RSMs from one another to predict more accurately. Strong memory also enables compound, multi-stage calculations, in which preliminary results (e.g. the first rows of a long multiplication problem) are memorized to be operated upon in later stages, or objects/images are mentally modified/combined in progressive steps (e.g. of a geometric construction). Strong memory facilitates the learning and application not only of concrete facts, but also of definite abstract principles, such as visual diagrams illustrating relationships between mathematical or mechanical quantities.
C. Keen memory facilitates manual skills, as well as mental ones.
Strong memory facilitates the development of manual as well as academic skills. Internal, ‘muscle memories’ are retained as well as the external sensings associated with them. Optimizing manual skill requires memorizing exactly what actions in what bodily positions with what objects in what proximity, orientation, and trajectory, yielded exactly what effects. Situations in which a certain course of action obtained a desired outcome are memorized and aimed for. If such an optimum position is within reach, a calculation may be made of how to attain it, projecting one’s bodily movements (and any trajectory of the target object), then making necessary adjustments of position and actions. Also, some materials worked upon have intricate properties (e.g. the fluctuating shape of wet mixtures, the delicate texture of plant fibers), requiring subtle recognitions and manipulations that a keen memory can discern.
III-2. The nature of creative/analytic intelligence.
A. Idea generation is based on explorativity and generation of new knowledge.
Creative intelligence is determination of new means to obtain goals, including material, sensory, and social ones. A creative innovation is a conjunction of a novel use of an object(s) (synthesis) with a component of a goal-obtaining method (analysis).
Creativity can be accomplished serendipitously when ‘random’ recreation, exploration, or examination of new places, objects or devices happens to discover or produce something of value. And the more knowledge one obtains via such ‘recreative’ behavior of the properties of things and the ways they can be manipulated and employed, the more likely such knowledge can be put to innovative use. Creative innovation is usually the result of an experiment based on an idea having a plausible, desired aim. An idea (a novel course of action) is generated by matching an object/action and its effects (on the front end) with the essence of a component of a known method to obtain a goal (on the back end), i.e. by considering a novel ‘substitution’ in such a method. The more actively and ‘randomly’ a mind considers acting upon objects, the more likely it is to make such a conjunction.
B. Idea generation requires abstract perception, in order to match knowledge with methods to obtain goals.
Identifying such a match of an object/action with a potential use is facilitated by considering each step of a goal-obtaining method (including the goal itself) discretely and determining its bare essence, in order to minimize the characteristics that need be matched by a possible substitution. This is presumably done by comparing the instances where the method was used successfully, to identify their commonality and trim out incidental detail, such as color, texture, location, and inessential parts. The more abstractly a method to a goal is considered, the more instances of its use can be incorporated as consistent with it, and so the more reduction of incidental detail via ‘cancellation’ can be done. The essence of a natural property or process, or of a method to obtain a goal, is formulated as a principle.
The more abstract a principle, the more incorporations (consistent particular instances) can be made of its cause (its antecedent), that would presumably yield its effect (its consequent). To generate novel ideas, a creative mind conceives abstract principles not only of methods to obtain goals, but also of methods to obtain each component or ‘step’ in such methods, and so on, ultimately analyzing phenomena in general. A creative mind then incorporates the principles of goal-obtaining methods as robustly as possible, i.e. it considers a maximum of possible substitutions (particular objects/actions) in them, that constitute potential alternative means to obtain the goals.
C. Matches are made of effects, as well as objects/actions; principles thereof being barely definite.
Ideas are generated not only by matching objects/actions of goal-obtaining methods, but also by matching their more abstract functions/effects. The properties/effects of a given material, tool, device, structure, or machine can be matched to similar properties/effects in a method to obtain a goal, even when the objects producing them are quite different. The commonality of such functions may be so complex and abstract that their principles can hardly be formulated definitely.
The simplest substitution ideas are of materials: different materials having similar properties that can be transformed into construction materials, tools, ceramics and cements, fibers (for cordage, textiles, and paper), adhesives, dyes, fuels, solvents, foods, etc.. Various tools and devices can substitute for the functions of human hands, for holding, guiding, lifting and moving, pulling, pressing, mixing, tearing, etc.. Various structural arrangements can support heavy weights, and various ‘simple machine’/set-up designs can magnify and redirect applied forces. There are various ways that a surface can be marked, that a fire or explosion can be ignited or accelerated, that a projectile can be launched, that latent energy such as a spring or battery can be gradually released, etc. Some ideas substitute different forms of power: animal strength instead of human, water flow instead of animal, steam pressure instead of water, electric current instead of steam. Some brilliant innovations are based on devices previously used in an entirely different field.
D. A creative mind considers a broad range of potential outcomes, as well as courses of action.
An idea of technological innovation must be verified by actual experiment, but its plausibility can be ‘checked mentally’ by considering the conceived scenario abstractly and incorporating every known instance of it, i.e. every reference situation in memory (RSM), to ‘see’ if a) the desired consequent invariably follows and b) all apparently-necessary cause (the commonality of the RSMs) exists. General predictions, claimed events (outcomes), and supposed principles are checked similarly.
A considered idea’s scenario, or any initial situation, must be considered abstractly in order to match it with the maximum range of applicable RSMs (and their principles), including those varying in details or aspects, to generate the full range of potential outcomes. Thus, more creative/analytic intelligence considers not only more possible interactions with available objects, but also more potential outcomes of situations in general, including less plausible/likely ones. While a concretely-perceiving mind tends to consider only what has previously occurred with the specific set of objects/circumstances in a given specific situation; an abstractly-perceiving mind tends to consider what has previously occurred with the *types of* objects and circumstances in a given *type of* situation. While a concretely-perceiving mind tends to be heavily influenced in its predictions by recent outcomes in immediate circumstances; an abstractly-perceiving mind is more conscious of long-term probabilities (including rare events). A creative mind is therefore more doubtful of predictions and cautious of pitfalls in a planned course of action.
E. A creative mind wonders why when anomalous outcomes occur, and thereby refines principles.
A creative mind applies principles to situations in order to predict them, just as it applies RSMs to them. In fact, determining the causal essence of an RSM—that which must be matched in order for its outcome to be effected—is facilitated by comparing multiple instances of this essence in order to identify their commonality, ‘trimming out’ incidental detail via cancellation, as discussed in section III-2.B. In other words, abstract perception and application of RSMs is tantamount to determination and application of principles.
When an anomalous, unexpected outcome occurs or is depicted, a concrete-perceiving mind tends to view it as a unique product of a unique situation (a unique set of circumstances), just one more RSM to file into the memory bank. But for an abstract-perceiver, an unexpected outcome has likely contradicted an assumed principle informed by a broad set of related phenomena, applicable to a range of similar situations. A creative mind doesn’t just assume with “hindsight bias” that an anomalous event was destined; it wonders *why* it deviated from expectation and seeks to explain it: to identify the key difference between that situation and the antecedent of the assumed principle (and of the RSMs informing it) that it contradicted. For example, if a pretty young girl robs a bank at gunpoint, it would represent not just a bizarre crime having unique circumstances, but also a violation of the principle that girls have timid dispositions, requiring explanation and revision. If the anomalous event was only depicted, its veracity may be doubted. A creative mind often wonders why odd things happened, why its principles have been violated, and thereby scrutinizes and refines them.
F. A creative mind argues and composes similarly as it generates ideas and scrutinizes predictions.
Robustly generating principles, ideas, and RSMs is useful not only for innovation and prediction, but also for argument, advocacy, and creative writing. To argue for or against a claimed event/effect, one must, based on the given situation/antecedent, adduce applicable principles and/or reference data that support or contradict it, and/or identify lacked necessary cause for contrary claims. Arguments that pertain to what did, what (likely) will, or what could happen, are treated similarly. Moral arguments that pertain to benefits and harms allegedly done to people, and whether they’ve merited it by their own deeds, and are treated similarly, as are inspirational arguments that persuade people they have qualities conducive to (causing) success. Legal arguments are treated similarly as well, except that they are based on legal principles and case decision precedents as reference. Fiction writing similarly generates imaginative but plausible ways that an exciting finale can be reached from a depicted situation, often limiting how much is revealed so that the outcome is uncertain, creating mystery and suspense.
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III-3. Summary and comparison of memory-based and creative/analytic intelligence types.
A. Memory-based intelligence.
Memory-based intelligence (M-Int) is better able to learn information and techniques that are generally observed or taught, than is creative/analytic intelligence (C-Int). These include the application not only of concrete facts, but also of definite abstract principles, such as those of math and science.
M-Int calculates previously-experienced and accessible outcomes accurately, but tends to overlook less plausible and less well-attested ones. M-Int notices more fine points of change (patterns) in experienced phenomena, and so can detect more subtle principles. M-Int makes finer distinctions between RSMs, and so can more precisely predict familiar situations and optimize courses of action to obtain a goal. In other words, M-Int is better at developing skill than C-Int: manual, academic, and technical. Since M-Int perceives more concretely than C-Int, it considers a narrower range of potential outcomes, and so is more optimistic of expected outcomes, more credulous of depicted claims (e.g. superstitions), and more careless of potential mishaps. However, M-Int wastes less energy in speculation and worry, in pursuing or avoiding ‘false leads’. M-Int is more proficient than C-Int when working in a familiar environment with controlled activities, such as a factory or a schoolroom.
B. Creative/analytic intelligence.
Creative/analytic intelligence (C-Int) is more explorative and curious. It seeks new sources of knowledge and experiments to find out the properties of things. C-Int is more interested in ‘random’ phenomena, asks *why* when unexpected outcomes occur, and tries to resolve general principles of nature and human behavior even in the absence of apparent utility.
C-Int perceives objects more discretely and abstractly, thereby considering more possible actions on them and more possible substitutions of them in methods to obtain a goal, i.e. it generates more ideas. C-Int similarly perceives general situations more abstractly, thereby considering (matching) more disparate reference situations in memory (RSMs) that may apply, and so considers more possible outcomes including less obvious/likely ones. C-Int considers data from more disparate and remote situations that indicate how a situation might result, e.g. the past behavior and tendencies of a human acter. C-Int therefore has better judgement in complex situations having multiple, distant causal factors.* C-Int generates and considers more arguments for and against an assertion. C-Int is more ‘open-minded’, more doubtful of conclusions, and skeptical of claims. C-Int is more proficient than M-Int when working in a novel environment with dynamic activities, such as a wilderness venture or a public debate forum.
*Note: In considering RSMs that less-fully match a situation, C-Int basically assumes that less of the detail observed in phenomena is necessary cause that must exist in order for the outcome (or at least a basic aspect of it) to occur. A converse way of looking at this is that concretely-perceiving M-Int, which narrows its RSM search to stronger matches, regards more of the contextual detail in observed phenomena to be causative, i.e. as necessary cause that must exist in order for the outcome to occur. Thus, when a generally similar situation is experienced in the future, that associated contextual detail in the RSM prevents it from matching the new, similar situation, and so that outcome is not considered as a possibility. This greater assumption of contextual causation by M-Int accounts for the observation by [Nisbett 03:112-5;129-30] that Asians regard more “situational factors” as causal/relevant, while Whites are more likely to regard personality traits and dispositions (i.e. principles of abstractly-similar past behavior) as causal. It is also for this reason that Asians feel less surprised by anomalous outcomes (section III-2.E), i.e. that Asians have much greater ‘hindsight bias’ with regard to situations having an outcome contrary to what was expected [131-3]: they assume that unique contextual detail of the situation was causative of its unique outcome, and that therefore no other RSMs are applicable to it and so its unusual outcome should have been expected. If you read Nisbett, be aware that the data he provides is merely grist for the steady diet of anti-White propaganda he cooks up, playing down/hyping up every White/Asian superiority to the max.
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III-4. Intelligence tests and visuo-spatial ability.
A. Intelligence tests, including visuo-spatial tasks, measure memory-based intelligence, not creativity.
Intelligence tests (ITs) have little to do with creativity, and mostly measure memory-based intelligence. Motivation to solve IT problems (to score well) is always a given, and the loci of the answers (the goals) are definite. The information needed to solve IT problems is either general knowledge one may have learned, or is supplied in the problem itself. In some cases, given items must be held in short-term memory to be mentally compared to other items or answer options, to detect similarities (e.g. the margins of puzzle pieces), differences, or patterns (e.g. changes in a matrices series). In visuo-spatial tasks, images must be held in ‘working memory’ to be mentally manipulated, combined, etc. The images to be ‘projected’ are supplied, as are the directions on how to project them, and usually the answer options to which the projections are to be compared. True creativity is, rather, based on one’s inherent urge to ‘randomly’ consider actions upon and uses of objects, and to ‘generally’ analyze and incorporate means to obtain goals (section III-2.A-C). Even in so-called creativity tests, the materials and motivation supplied to perform the tasks obscure differences in subjects’ actual creative drive.
B. Explanation of the male-female visuo-spatial ability gap.
The fact that females have better general memory than males but are inferior at visuo-spatial tasks, evinces that such ability has bases beyond general memory. Visual manipulations and motions are experienced through interacting with objects and watching others do so. Boys have a greater innate drive to perform and observe such activities than do girls. They like to pursue, manipulate, and assemble objects, to wrestle and fight, to compete in and watch sports, to play action-oriented video games, to engage in constructive work, etc. In addition to obtaining greater experience, boys likely have greater innate ability to develop visual memory for such action-related processes. The fine motor skills that females excel at do not involve dynamic visual transformations, and are likely based on females’ keener perception and general memory.
C. The difference between use of abstract principles to calculate, and abstract formulation and perception of principles to generate ideas.
The use of abstract principles for prediction and calculation does not imply a creative disposition. The applications, for example, of basic laws of motion to predict a moving object crossing one’s path, or of Euclid’s laws of triangles to resolve the area of an odd-shaped window, are straightforward and may have as mundane a motivation as dodging a stone or collecting a paycheck. In a truly creative (original) inference, the process and motivation are not so straightforward; the match of an object with a principle’s antecedent is not so plain, and the outcome not so obvious (section III-2.A-D). Creative ideation requires not merely knowledge and application of principles, but conscious consideration of principles abstracted from any given instance, some being hardly definite, for the purpose of incorporating their elements as expansively as possible. In contrast, autistic savants are known to perform complex mathematical and calendrical calculations (etc.) without formulation or conscious awareness of the principles they employ, hence without effort to generate creative ideas (section IV-8.D).
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IV. Evidence of intelligence types in Whites and Chinese.
Introduction.
I have reviewed the nature of creative/analytic and memory-based intelligence, and the characteristics associated with each. I will now review the evidence that Whites have more characteristics of creative/analytic intelligence, and Chinese have more characteristics of memory-based intelligence. I will review the pursuits of exploration, recreation, and science; imagination in the creative arts; perception, categorization and reasoning tests; language, expository writing, and debate; religion and superstition; gambling and carelessness; and proficiency in manual and academic skills and intelligence tests.
IV-1. Exploration and recreation.
Logically, people who have active and searching bodies—who explore the world and engage in recreation—also have active and curious minds. And Whites are far more explorative and recreational than are Chinese.
A. Whites are more explorative and interested in scientific discovery than are Chinese.
Europeans have explored, mapped, and investigated the world far more than have Chinese [1]. Nearly all great explorers have been White; very few have been Chinese [2]. Chinese have had minimal curiosity about the rest of the world and have known far less of it than have Whites [3], even today [4]. Scientific research and experimentation, a close cousin of exploration [5], has also been mainly the province of White men [6]. Since ancient times, Whites have been eager to explore the outer and inner worlds with telescopes, microscopes, and a miscellany of other instruments they invented for the purpose; while the Chinese had little interest in these tools beyond making politically-based calendars [7]. Architectural and mechanical forms of technology at which Europeans have excelled, such as their medieval mania for automated devices (e.g. clocks), are also partly recreational pursuits [8].
1. • “China had imperial interests of its own and engaged in expansionary ventures that resulted in the acquisition of…vast tracks of land in Asia. But China did not exhibit the same zest for exploration and overseas power. The Portuguese advanced into the Indian Ocean with ruthless determination, daring and pugnacity. The Chinese came with a live-and-let-live attitude, uninterested in converting heathens, uninterested in acquiring special access to other countries’ staples, and indifferent to chivalric deeds…There was no effort towards creating a maritime empire, establishing new bases for trade, and expanding militarily.” [Duchesne 04:188]
; After recounting how vigorously the classic Greeks explored and mapped the known world, he writes: “There was far less desire to explore the geographical contours and landscapes of the world among the cultures of the rest of the world. While in the 1st century BC the Han dynasty extended its geographical boundaries south into Vietnam, north into Korea, and east into the Tarim Basin, the Chinese showed little geographical interest in the world beyond its own borders… [W]hat is striking about Temple’s examples of Chinese maps – intended, no doubt, to impress the reader – is how insular Chu Ssu-Pen’s maps of 1311 and 1320 AD were by comparison with the much earlier maps of Ptolemy (120–170AD). Temple writes that Chinese map-making was superior to anything seen in Europe before the fifteenth century, and may have a point as far as the ability of Chinese geographers to apply grids to maps to determine the positions and distances of local places. Yet, it is worth noting that, according to Temple’s words, “so many early maps did not survive; they were not copied, and were frequently destroyed” (30–33)… Of two maps that survived… both…“display a regional bias”. Even a 16th century reproduction of Zheng He’s sailing maps, printed in Louise Levathes’s The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405–1433 (1994), lacks any apposite scale, size, and sense of proportion regarding the major landmasses of the earth. There is reason to believe that, as late as the seventeenth century, Chinese astronomers, gifted as they were, continued to think in flat-earth terms (Huff 1993: 313).” [192-3]
; Ricardo Duchesne also wrote a general study of Whites’ historical preeminence in exploration, including the Hellenes, Norsemen, the Age of Discovery Europeans, and modern explorers: A Civilization of Explorers (2012). [Duchesne 12]
; “These explorations encouraged astronomical and geographical scholarship leading to the full conceptualization of the shape of the earth by Eratosthenes (276–185 BC), who not only contextualized the location of Europe in relation to the Atlantic and the North Sea, but also calculated the spherical size of the earth (within 5 percent of its true measure), with the obvious implication that the Mediterranean was only a small portion of the globe. This spirit of inquiry continued through the second century AD, in the Hellenistic city of Alexandria, when Ptolemy wrote his System of Astronomy and Geography. In these works Ptolemy carefully explained the principles and methods required in mapmaking, and in Universalis tabula produced the first world map depicting India, China, South-East Asia, the British Isles, Denmark, and East Africa below the Horn of Africa.
There was far less desire to explore the world’s geography and landscapes among the peoples of the non-Western world. While in the first century BC the Han dynasty extended its geographical boundaries south into Vietnam, north into Korea, and east into the Tarim Basin, the Chinese showed little geographical interest beyond their own borders. What is striking about such Chinese maps as Chu Ssu-Pen maps of 1311 and 1320 AD is how insular they were in comparison with the much earlier maps of Ptolemy (120–170 AD). The ability of Chinese geographers to apply grids to maps to determine the positions and distances of local places is well-attested. Yet, even a sixteenth-century reproduction of Zheng He’s sailing maps lacks any apposite scale, size, and sense of proportion regarding the major landmasses of the earth.
The Chinese supposition that the earth was flat remained almost unchanged from ancient times until Jesuit missionaries introduced modern ideas in the seventeenth century.” [72]
; “The Egyptians, the Maya, and the Chinese were relatively restricted to their homeland and immediate surroundings in their movements. The
Chinese ventured momentarily into the Indian Ocean, but even after European ships had sailed into the harbors of the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Indian Oceans, “no Indian or Chinese ship was ever seen in Seville, Amsterdam or London.”” [73]
; “In actuality, the Chinese did not discover a single nautical mile—the Indian Ocean had been regularly navigated for a long time, unlike the Atlantic and the western coasts of Africa. The Portuguese were relatively poor and many of the sailors manning the ships longed for better opportunities, but what drove the leading men above all else was a chivalric (Faustian) desire for renowned and superior achievement in the face of the economic costs, persistent hardships, and high mortality rates. ” [79]
• “Why did China not make that little extra effort that would have taken it around the southern end of Africa and up into the Atlantic? Why, decades and even centuries after the arrival of European visitors in Chinese waters, were there no Chinese vessels in the harbors of Europe?… As always, there are several reasons… To begin with, the Chinese lacked range, focus, and above all, curiosity. They went to show themselves, not to see and learn; to bestow their presence, not to stay; to receive obeisance and tribute, not to buy.” [Landes 98:96]
• “[A] psychological affinity is apparent between Confucian opposition to military expansion, attachment to one’s native place (a strong Chinese characteristic), and reluctance to pursue massive exploration, settlement, trade, and exploitation abroad. The Chinese official view of Cheng Ho’s voyages contrasts dramatically with the inexorable drive of Europeans, especially from the late fifteenth century onward, to explore, colonize, and…exploit.” [Bodde 91:251]
2. • “The history of European explorations stands as an excellent subject matter for the elucidation and the teaching of Western civilization. Most explorers in history have been European. Concise Encyclopedia of Explorations lists a total of 274 explorers, of which only fifteen are non-European, with none listed after the mid-fifteenth century…” [Duchesne 12:69]
; “An appendix [of Debenham’s Discovery and Exploration], “Famous Explorers and Their Routes,” lists a total of 203 names, of which only eight are non-Western. Similarly, in Peter Whitfield’s New Found Lands, every explorer mentioned after Zheng He is Western… Only
one of the forty biographies [in Hanbury-Tenison’s The Great Explorers] is about a non-Westerner, Nain Singh (1830?–1882), who mapped the great plateau of Tibet.” [89]
3. • “China’s contacts with the outside world certainly were more frequent and often also more ‘open’ than has long been suggested by authors who like to think of early modern Qing China as a ‘closed’ empire. But as compared to what went on in Western Europe, China at the time nevertheless can only be regarded as much more ‘autarkic’, in a material as well as in an immaterial sense. As a country it exchanged fewer goods, people and ideas and less capital with other continents than Western European countries, first and foremost Britain and the Dutch Republic, did. Overall, as compared to their counterparts in Western countries, China’s rulers were not exactly well informed about matters that lay outside their own orbit. Whereas in London and Amsterdam one could collect information about all quarters of the globe quite easily, in Peking or any other Chinese town one would have a very hard time to find any up-to-date and trustworthy information whatsoever about what went on in other continents. China’s court was uninformed about Europe and many other parts of the world, not only in economic but also in political and military matters. It was quite ignorant of civilizations in other parts of the globe. Scores of anecdotes and Chinese maps clearly illustrate that. Government policies made China at the time much less open to external influences than societies in the West. The anecdote is even told, though there is no independent proof that it is true, that the Qianlong emperor had to be informed about the size and population of India and about who was ruling there. When talking to Macartney, he inquired how far England was from Russia and whether Italy and Portugal were not near England and tributary to it.
…Whatever indicator one might think of to measure interest in other continents – the number of people going there, the number of people coming from there, the number of texts written and read about them, the number of people learning languages that were spoken there, the number and variety of goods imported from them and so on – China would time and again score very badly, in any case much worse than Western Europe. If the Chinese had always been so open to the rest of the world, why did they still have to learn so much about it after the West forcefully intruded into their country in the middle of the nineteenth century? In economic affairs, government’s ignorance of the outside world, and especially the world outside Asia, was pronounced. In military affairs it was shocking and irresponsible…
Peking, for example, hardly knew what went on in Canton in Sino-Western trade, let alone what was going on in Western economies… In Western Europe enormous amounts of information were gathered about other parts of the world… As compared to Western Europe and its global information gathering, China was self-enclosed and uninterested. What Headrick claims for the nineteenth century was already correct earlier on: ‘In every part of the world, Europeans were more knowledgeable about events on other continents than indigenous people about their neighbours.’ The combined effort to ‘explore, control and utilize’ that was so characteristic of Western dealings with people in its colonies and other parts of the world in general, for better and for worse, was almost entirely lacking in the Middle Kingdom.” [Vries 15:359-61]
• “But when the Jesuits arrived in the sixteenth century, it was obvious that Western cartography was in advance of that of the Chinese. Needham did not analyse the reasons, which by an educated guess should be the inadequacy of indigenous Chinese geometry and mathematics, together with the lack of knowledge that the Earth was a globe.” [Qian 85:73]
4. • “That the Chinese underwent any sort of age of exploration—let alone one so extensive [Zheng He’s voyages to east Africa]—is truly amazing given their inward-looking nature. The period of seclusion that followed Zheng He’s death lasted for the next five centuries. Even today, Chinese people remain little more than theoretically aware of countries offshore of their own and possess only the most inchoate knowledge as to where many of them might be or what might go on in them. When the taxi driver asked me if the map of Macau were a map of Macau, that wasn’t an aberration; that is the norm.” [Parfitt 12:46]
; “Chinese people have neat little answers ready for whenever foreign countries are mentioned. This partly stems from their penchant for slogans… and, if you will allow me to labor the point, owes an enormous amount to a near total lack of knowledge pertaining to the outside world.” [63]
; “Incidentally, it’s not just the so-called mainland Chinese who are almost totally in the dark in regard to Tibet’s history and assimilation… [N]ot one of [my >50 adult students in Taiwan] was aware that Tibet had once been a country, never mind a country that China had invaded…” [113]
5. • “By the middle of the thirteenth century, then, a considerable group of active minds, stimulated not only by the technological successes of recent generations but also led on by the will-o’-the-wisp of perpetual motion, were beginning to generalize the concept of mechanical power. They were coming to think of the cosmos as a vast reservoir of energies to be tapped and used according to human intentions. They were power conscious to the point of fantasy. But without such fantasy, such soaring imagination, the power technology of the Western world would not have been developed. When Peter of Maricourt’s friend Roger Bacon wrote, c. 1260, ‘Machines may be made by which the largest ships, with only one man steering them, will be moved faster than if they were filled with rowers; wagons may be built which will move with incredible speed and without the aid of beasts; flying machines may be constructed in which a man. . . .may beat the air with wings like a bird. . . .machines will make it possible to go to the bottom of seas and rivers’, he spoke not alone but for the engineers of his age.” [White 62:133-4]
• “[The search for a perpetual-motion machine] reflects the general passionate interest of medieval man in natural sources of energy. They were power-conscious to the point of fantasy, always looking for sources of power behind hydraulic, wind, and tidal energy. “They were coming to think of the cosmos as a vast reservoir of energies to be tapped and used according to human intentions…without such fantasy, such soaring imagination, the power technology of the Western world would not have been developed.”” [Gimpel 76:127;127-146]
• “The seventeenth century witnessed the rise and spread of experimental science. Gilbert played with magnets; Galileo rolled balls down inclined planes; Torricelli toyed with tubes of mercury to arrive at the principle of air pressure; Pascal sent a barometer to the top of a mountain to confirm the conjecture that the atmosphere forms a great sea of air; William Harvey dissected and vivisected countless animals in his quest to understand the heart; Newton ran beams of light through prisms and lenses… “Thought experiments”—experiments impossible to carry out in practice—likewise formed part of seventeenth-century science; consider, for example, Galileo’s proposal to view the earth from the moon…
The Renaissance model of experimentation has been likened to a noble “hunt” for secrets of nature with successful hunters sometimes receiving big rewards from patrons…
As a component of his inductive program, Francis Bacon argued for a multifaceted role for experiments. In the first instance he intended that they produce new phenomena artificially, to “twist the lion’s tail,” as the expression has it. Such experiments were not to test anything, but to add facts and examples for later inductive analysis. A classic example of a Baconian experiment is Boyle’s sustained observations of a rotting piece of meat that glowed… But Bacon also envisioned a role, something like theory testing, for experiments conducted at a higher level in the inductive process, “experiments of light,” experiments designed to question nature more specifically and in the manner of an experimental test as we commonly envision it. Then, Bacon also combined “experiments of light” with practical applied research in his “experiments of fruit.”…
As experimental science matured and developed, experiment came to be used as a refined tool to test theories or hypotheses and advance scientific discourse. Newton’s “crucial experiment” proving light to be composed of rays of differing degrees of refraction had this character. Robert Hooke arrived at the generalization that stress and strain are proportional—Hooke’s Law—by tests conducted with springs. Robert Boyle is also widely credited for promoting experimental science as a powerful new technique. With increasing, if diverse, attention given to experiment in the seventeenth century, the scientific enterprise naturally became more instrument based and technology dependent. Generations of amateur and professional inquirers into nature applied themselves with telescopes, microscopes, thermometers, beakers, scales, barometers, clocks, inclined planes, prisms, lenses, mirrors, and, later, static electricity machines. (The increasing demand for instruments also provided employment for a growing number of expert instrument makers.) Some of these technological implements extended the range of the senses, and instruments became essential tools for the production of knowledge in a number of arenas of science.
To conclude with one prominent example, Boyle, assisted by Hooke, invented the air pump or vacuum pump in 1658–59. With an evacuated receiver providing a new “experimental space,” Boyle’s pneumatic pump added a spectacular new instrument to the armamentarium of seventeenth-century experimental science. Boyle used the apparatus to investigate the elasticity or “spring of the air,” and he came to discover the law correlating pressure and volume of confined gases…” [McClellan 06:270-1]
• “Electricity was known, but not understood, by the ancients, and curious savants played with it, almost as with a toy, from the eighteenth century on. Such experiments could have practical consequences; hence Benjamin Franklin’s invention of the lightning rod. But the systematic use of electricity as a form of energy and its application to industrial processes had to wait for the nineteenth century…” [Landes 98:284]
• “Economic necessity certainly was not the motivating force behind the plethora of technological novelties. They were the products of a fertile imagination that took delight in itself and in its ability to operate within the constraints of the possible, if not the useful. Some of the novel mechanisms pictured in the machine books were later incorporated into practical devices; others stand unused as proof of the fertility of the contriving mind…
The argument that economic incentives were the driving force behind the invention and patenting of a majority of novel artifacts is not persuasive. Although many inventors were motivated by the unrealistic belief that their particular gadget would earn them a fortune, others pursued novelty for the psychic rewards it brought. In neither instance, however, do we find inventors working to supply pressing human needs or carefully appraising economic conditions, calculating precisely what innovations are most likely to bring the higher financial returns. For this reason, many patent holders belong in the company of the technological dreamers who repeatedly, enthusiastically, and ingeniously provide solutions to problems that are mainly of concern to themselves.” [Basalla 88:69-71]
6. • On Whites’ preeminence in science and China’s shortcomings, see section V-3.A-D and its sources.
• On China’s failure to develop the scientific method and scientific principles, see section IV-5.A-B and its sources.
• White science has been superior to Chinese since the classic Greeks: “There had already been some vital scientific seeds in Hellenic civilization. Thumbing through the books of Euclid, Archimedes, Apollonius, an other ancient mathematicians – rendered into modern notation – one cannot help but being struck by their scientific modernity and unvarnished professionalism. Yet when we try hard to make sense of the propositions on mechanics and geometrical optics in the roughly contemporaneous Mohist Canons, we find ourselves more often than not in a hopeless quandry.” [Qian 85:47]
• “[T]he Europeans institutionalized the study of the natural world by making it the central core of the university curriculum.
Moreover, the universities developed a system for taking up and disputing all sorts of naturalistic questions…This literatue and its use resulted in a concerted form of skeptical probing of a large set of questions in the natural sciences — physics, astronomy, cosmology, mechanics, and so forth. These probings included questions about the ultimate constitution of nature and the conditions of its transformation. Questions were asked about whether the world is singluar or plural, whether the Earth turns on its axis or is stationary, “whether every effecting thing is a cause of that which it is effecting”, whether things can happen by chance, whether a vacuum is possible, whether the natural state of an object is stationary or in motion, whether luminous celestial bodies are hot, whether the sea has tides, and so on, for vitrually every known field of inquiry…On the other had, there is no evidence that Muslim scholars in the madrasas, or Chinese scholars prepping for the Civil Examinations, indulged in such skeptical probing of the natural world…
The prime evidence of this profound interest in scientific questions is the radically different reactions to the telescope and other experimental procedures in Europe, China,… ‘This curiosity flowed into multiple’ “new experimental studies: in medicine and miscroscopy, in hydraulics and pneumatics, and in electrical studies.” [Huff 11:151-2]
; “In short, the European practice of experimental medicine, the detailed examination of the human body through the use of manipulative techniques [since the 13th century], was far in advance of China, the Middle East, or other parts of the Muslim world. As a result, the Europeans developed a considerable stock of empirical knowledge about human anatomy that was not available outside Europe. Inspired by the pursuit of scientific knowledge, European physicians engaged in a variety of practices that would have been forbidden in a Muslim context and restricted by Chinese imperial authorities. These practices included (1) the dissection of human bodies, (2) the dissection of pigs, (3) the performance of the operation in a public forum, and (4) the publication of richly detailed drawings of the human anatomy in all its minute, and some would say offensive, detail.” [186;176-86]
7. • “Moreover, because the telescope was quickly transported around the world in the early seventeenth century by European traders, missionaries, and ambassadors, we get to see non-European reactions to this world-altering scientific instrument. This was the era when Europeans were making their early forays into China, India, and Southeast Asia. In coming into contact with the telescope, aspiring scientists in China, the Ottoman Empire, and Mughal India could have joined Europe in its ecumenical, global pursuit of modern science that culminated in the Newtonian synthesis. This path to modern science was indispensable: it laid the foundations of the modern world order – in mechanics, the science of motion, pneumatics, and ultimately electricity and the electronic society.
But the intercivilizational encounters of the seventeenth century did not result in such a new world science. The three civilizational encounters, between Europe and China, Europe and the Mughals, and Europe and the Ottomans, did not bear much fruit. The discovery machine – that is, the telescope that set Europeans on fire with enthusiasm and curiosity – failed to ignite the same spark elsewhere. That led to a great divergence that was to last all the way to the end of the twentieth century. But it was not just the telescope’s promise that was passed by: the same thing occurred with the microscope and the study of human and animal microscopy as well as electrical energy and pneumatics.” [Huff 11:4-5]
; “[E]yeglasses were invented only in Europe in the thirteenth century. Those who believe in the power of reverse engineering would imagine that the problem could be solved by local experimenters, if not by simple trial and error. The fact remains that though eyeglasses were taken around the world in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, no telescopes were invented there.” [19]
; “Most important, all this training and immersion in the new [European] astronomy [by visiting Jesuit missionaries during the 17th century] was not carried over to training for the Civil Service Examinations. Indeed, after Verbiest’s departure, the study of astronomy was increasingly restricted to the palace and the Bureau of Astronomy. It was forbidden to place questions on the subject in the Civil Service Examinations. Thus “natural studies” were carefully sequestered from the general public of scholars-in-training outside the court.” [106-8]
; “[T]he Chinese had all the basic tools and an amazing range of specialized treatises written in Chinese by the missionaries to explain each and every major aspect of the new astronomy from Europe. The link between the theoretical and observational parts was especially striking under the guidance of the missionaries.
With regard to the first indicator of innovative impulses concerning the telescope itself, all studies to this date indicate that the Chinese made no major improvements on the telescope: they did not build large, more powerful telescopes comparable to those in Europe, nor did they invent the mocirometer for measuring small angles within the telescope. They did not make any improvements on the telescope, nor did they invent the reflecting telescope…” [109]
; “There was what may be called a curiosity deficit, with the result that nothing extraordinary was undertaken or fulfilled in astronomy by the Chinese in this period. This contrasts with the example of Europeans, especially Christiaan Huygens (and Christopher Wren), who resolved the odd appearances of Saturn by putting forth the ring hypothesis in 1656. Likewise, Ole Romer put forth the startling idea of proving that the speed of light is finite, not instantaneous, based on his telescopic observations of the satellites of Jupiter.
The arrival of the telescope in China did not have the fructifying effect on scientific inquiry that it had on astronomy in Europe.” [112-3]
; “This sketch of the early history of microscopy should be sufficient to remind us of the extraordinary and revolutionary work that was being done in the life sciences in the seventeenth century in Europe. Our understanding of the human body, of blood circulation, and of the reproductive systems of plants, insects, and animals was radically changed during this period. Likewise, the discovery of invisible microorganisms living in all aspects of the human and natural environment brought another radical shift in scientific thinking… Yet, the remarkable fact in the broader canvas is the absence of scientists equivalent to William Harvey, Robert Hooke, Malpighi, Swammerdam, Reiner de Graaf, and Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, among others, in the three other civilizations of the world.
In previous chapters, it was pointed out that by the late 1400s, European glass and spectacle technology had spread to the Ottoman Empire, to the Middle East, and to India. In the late 1400s, hundreds of pairs of spectacles were sent to the Levant, and by the early sixteenth century, the scale of exporting jumped into the thousands of pairs shipped to the Ottoman Empire. So it is fair to say that European lens technology, probably the highest that existed, centered in Florence, was available around the world…
Likewise, by the 1620s, the Jesuits had brought European lenses to China. More than that, they published books in Chinese explaining the construction and use of telescopes and many other Western devices. Joseph Needham and Lu Gwei-Djen published a study of two seventeenth-century Chinese scholars famous for making spectacles and then a telescope. However, both of these scholars, Po Yu and Sun Yun-qiu were born after 1628, when Jesuit volumes explaining the telescope, lenses, and human vision had already been made available in Chinese. This casts doubt on Needham’s claim that Po Yu was a “Chinese Lipperhey”…
Even so, there have been no reports indicating that the Chinese then went on to invent or use miscroscopes in this period, as the Dutch spectacle makers did and as Galileo did back in 1610. Beyond that, we have no reports of Chinese microscopic studies of plant, animal, or human physiology such as took place in seventeenth-century Europe.
A recent synthetic study of Chinese science during the seventeenth century notes that the Chinese knew little of the new medical advances in Europe and consequently focused on recovering and renewing the ancient Chinese medical classics. According to this account, the Chinese used “general assumptions about the application of yin-yang, the five phases, and the system of circulation tracts (jingluo) to understand the human body and its susceptibility to illness.” But this was not accompanied by the kind of anatomical or miscroscopical study widely practiced in Europe.” [Huff 11:205-7]
• “In 1792 Britain made a bona fide attempt to “export” the Industrial Enlightenment to China in the form of the embassy of Lord George Macartney, who was sent to China to display the wonders of the age of Enlightenment and to pry open the Chinese market for British products. The Chinese on the whole rejected the opportunity and Macartney did not do for China what Admiral Perry was to do for Japan sixty years later. It is possible that the attempt was botched: Macartney brought with him mostly scientific instruments, and not many of the cheap and high-quality industrial products… But by that time, the Chinese leadership lacked the aggressive curiosity of the Europeans. No Chinese envoys were sent to Britain to examine its innovations.” [Mokyr 09:78]
8. • On Europe’s glorious architecture, largely an aesthetic pursuit, see section V-2.G.1 and its sources.
• Development of sophisticated power machinery was a subject of vivid imagination by Europeans. See section IV-2.B and its sources.
• “The men of the thirteenth century thought of measuring time in mechanical terms because they had developed a mechanical outlook of which mills and bell ringing mechanisms were clear evidence. Clocks spread rapidly throughout Europe, but production was not limited to clock faces, hands, and motors. On public buildings, as in Basel and Bologna, or inside churches, as in Strasbourg and Lund, extremely complicated clocks were constructed. Often, telling the time was almost incidental, accompanied as it was by the revolutions of the stars, and by the movements and pirouettes of angels, saints, and Madonnas. These contraptions were both the result and the evidence of an irrepressible taste for mechanical achievements…
Books on mechanics proliferated in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. More significant than that, a mechanical outlook began to pervade such improbable fields as art and philosophy. While the artists of the Far East delighted in painting flowers, fish, and horses, Leonardo da Vinci and Francesco di Giorgio Martini were obsessed with machinery. Philosophers came to regard the universe as a great piece of clockwork, the human body as a piece of machinery, and God as an outstanding “clock-maker.”” [Cipolla 80:180-1]
• “Suddenly, towards the middle of the fourteenth century, the mechanical clock seized the imagination of our ancestors. Something of the civic pride which earlier had expended itself in cathedral-building was diverted to the construction of astronomical clocks of astounding intricacy and elaboration. No European community felt able to hold up its head unless in its midst the planets wheeled in cycles and epicycles, while angels trumpeted, cocks crew, and apostles, kings, and prophets marched and countermarched at the booming of the hours.
It was not only in their diversity, their scale, and their wide diffusion that these automata were unlike those of earlier times… These new great astronomical clocks were presented frankly as mechanical marvels, and the public delighted in them as such.
But while they were gargantuan toys, such clocks were far more than toys: they were symbols related to the inmost, and often unverbalized, tendencies of thar age. By 1319-20 a novel theory of impetus was emerging, transitional between that of Aristotle and Newton’s inertial motion… And the great clock, partly because its inexorability was so playfully masked, its mechanism so humanized by its whimsicalities, furnished the picture…
Giovanni’s clock was only incidentally a timepiece: it included celestial wanderings of sun, moon, and five planets, and provided a perpetual calendar of all religious feasts…” [White 62:124-6]
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B. Whites are more active and recreational than Chinese, who are more task-focused.
The greater restless energy of Whites is equally evident in their day to day recreational activities. Whites can’t wait for school or work to end so that they can run around and play [1]. Chinese are more focused and persistent in productive work, almost immune to boredom and distraction [2], but lacking in alacrity and disinclined to physical exertion when no tangible gain is to be had [3]. The more subdued nature of Chinese is evident even in infancy and childhood [4]. Whites strive to sail every sea, climb every mountain, hike every continent, and excel in every sport. Chinese, on the contrary, have hardly any sporting tradition since ancient times [5]. Chinese rarely participate in sports [6], and what spectator leagues they have are very recent and small. While many Japanese play in Major League Baseball, no Chinese ever has [7].
1. • “The enthusiastic plans for recreation – an impatience to get at tennis or riding or something else – characterizing most foreigners, never interfere with Chinese at work. They impress us as being incapable of fuming about in anxiety to get at something other than what they are doing at any time. They have no frenzies except those of despair in extremities. Even the small children are vastly different from ours. The turbulent shouting and jumping about from the instant of dismissal, such as we see among American kindergarten and lower grade pupils, does not prevail among Chinese children of the same age. They play at times – with kites or dolls, or at beating with sticks any roaming dog that can be cornered – but the excited jumping about known among us is rarely seen.” [Townsend 33:114]
• “It seems to be a physiological fact that to the Chinese exercise is superfluous. They cannot understand the desire which seems to possess all classes of foreigners alike, to walk when there is no desire to go anywhere; much less can they comprehend the impulse to race over the country at the risk of one’s life, in such a singular performance as that known as a “paper hunt,” representing “hare and hounds”; or the motive which impels men of good social position to stand all the afternoon in the sun, trying to knock a base-ball to some spot where it shall be inaccessible to some other persons, or, on the other hand, struggling to catch the same ball with celerity, so as to “kill” another person on his “base”! A Cantonese teacher asked a servant about a foreign lady whom he had seen playing tennis: “How much is she paid for rushing about like that?” On being told “Nothing,” he would not believe it. Why any mortal should do acts like this, when he is abundantly able to hire coolies to do them for him, is, we repeat, essentially incomprehensible to a Chinese, nor is it any more comprehensible to him because he has heard it explained.” [Smith 94:92-3]
2. • “But the physical stamina of all peasant class Chinese is fairly good. Lean, scrawny, light in weight and patiently plodding, their constancy of toil under the hardest conditions is one of the wonders of the world. They cannot work as long without eating as a Westerner, for the reason that their sinewy bodies carry no excess energy stored in extra ounces of fat, and their bulky vegetable diet provides no strength for long ahead. But replenished with a dish of rice, or a few raw sweet potatoes now and then, plus a bowl of tea, a Chinese can keep going throughout the day and throughout life, for that matter, in a fashion no American or Englishman could approach.” [Townsend 33:19]
; “Among the virtues of the Chinese, patience is of prominent rank. The very look of the people suggests its unfathomable depths. The different nervous constitution of the race evidently aids this tremendously. Small children assigned to confining work, such as intricate embroidery, will sit all day, day in and day out (they have nothing corresponding to Sunday as a break in the week in China) without signs of impatience. They bend their eyes close over their work and keep up the mechanical motions of their hands as monotonously as a machine, ten or twelve hours a day. In former times Chinese schools commonly began as early in the morning as there was light, and continued, with a break at noon, until darkness settled in the evening. The pupils were expected to keep their eyes fastened on their books and keep up also a humming sing-song with their lips to prove attention to the text. Peasants plodding in the fields and handicraft workers; along the village streets plug away without a sign of impatience or weariness hour after hour, often until far into the night. They do not work as fast as an Occidental, and it is usually impossible to hurry them. But nobody ever heard of a Chinese suffering a collapse of nerves. So far as anything except physical torture is concerned, they appear to have no nerves. In this connection I have frequently noticed, and I believe all foreigners in China have noticed, their complete indifference to noise… Also, Chinese employees betray no impatience at unexpectedly long hours. What stretch of continued desk or household work would be necessary to cause one to show fatigue, no one can imagine. At hours of overtime they make no complaint, but plod on without a change of countenance.
Those employed in American government and business offices seem absolutely tireless. Few ever ask for a vacation, and this is rather meanly taken advantage of by foreigners, government and business employers alike… In one office I knew, a Chinese employee had worked twenty-three years with only a few days off, and that was on the occasion of some important family ceremony. Another had worked thirty-seven years in the same office without any vacation as such, and was then given a trip to Hong Kong by an appreciative consul. The enthusiastic plans for recreation – an impatience to get at tennis or riding or something else – characterizing most foreigners, never interfere with Chinese at work…” [113-4]
; “They know money does not make itself, and so each puts ample personal energy into making all he can. In that objective they are the world’s champions of industriousness. Their day and night endurance in tasks where profits are good and assured, especially after they emigrate to a peaceful country, is past belief. A Chinese will still be going strong when an emigrant Jew or lunch-counter Greek is panting with his tongue out.” [224]
• “It seems to make no particular difference to a Chinese how long he remains in one position. He will write all day like an automaton. If he is a handicraftsman, he will stand in one place from dewy morn till dusky eve, working away at his weaving, his gold-beating, or whatever it may be, and do it every day without any variation in the monotony, and apparently with no special consciousness that there is any monotony to be varied. In the same way Chinese school-children are subjected to an amount of confinement, unrelieved by any recesses or change of work, which would soon drive Western pupils to the verge of insanity. The very infants in arms, instead of squirming and wriggling as our children begin to do almost as soon as they are born, lie as impassive as so many mud gods. And at a more advanced age, when Western children would vie with the monkey in its wildest antics, Chinese children will often stand, sit, or squat in the same posture for a great length of time.” [Smith 94:92]
; “It is in his staying qualities that the Chinese excels the world. Of that quiet persistence which impels a Chinese student to keep on year after year attending the examinations, until he either takes his degree at the age of ninety or dies in the effort, mention has been already made. No rewards that are likely to ensue, nor any that are possible, will of themselves account for this extraordinary perseverance. It is a part of that innate endowment with which the Chinese are equipped, and is analogous to the fleetness of the deer or the keen sight of the eagle. A similar quality is observed in the meanest beggar at a shop door. He is not a welcome visitor, albeit so frequent in his appearances. But his patience is unfailing, and his perseverance invariably wins its modest reward, a single brass cash.” [154]
3. • “A son selected to be educated is by tradition exempt from labor in the home. The Chinese dislike physical exertion, and hence what they do not get by economic compulsion they do not get at all.” [Townsend 33:225-6]
• “How many of those who have had the pleasure of building a house in China, with Chinese contractors and workmen, thirst to do it again? The men come late and go early. They are perpetually stopping to drink tea. They make long journeys to a distant lime-pit carrying a few quarts of liquid mud in a cloth bag, when by using a wheelbarrow, one man could do the work of three; but this result is by no means the one aimed at. If there is a slight rain all work is suspended. There is generally abundant motion with but little progress, so that it is often difficult to perceive what it is which represents a day’s “labor” of a gang of men. We have known a foreigner, dissatisfied with the progress of his carpenters in lathing, accomplish while they were eating their dinner as much work as all four of them had done in half a day…
To the Chinese, the chronic impatience of the Anglo-Saxon is not only unaccountable, but quite unreasonable… In any case, appreciation of the importance of celerity and promptness is difficult to cultivate in a Chinese… But in no circumstances is Chinese indifference to the lapse of time more annoying to a foreigner than when the occasion is a mere social call…” [Smith 94:44-6]
4. • See section II-1 and its sources.
• See the [Smith 94:92] citation, above.
5. • “No history of Chinese sports has ever been attempted, perhaps because so little has been written about them by Confucian-minded scholars, and also because organized sports seem in fact to have played quite a minor role in Chinese life.” [Bodde 91:292]
; “[T]he field of open sports reveals several significant differences between China and the West. In China physical sports have almost always played a very subordinate role; contact sports have been rare; spectator sports barely existent; and competition between individuals has often been muted by subordination to group competition.” [307-8]
• “Of the differences we see between various races, this absence of physical courage in the Chinese is perhaps a characteristic instinctively repellent to Anglo-Saxons. It is coupled, of course, with Chinese distaste for any kind of vigorous physical endeavor. No one ever saw or heard of a typical Chinese engaging in any sort of sport requiring activity. They are the one large group of the world’s population having absolutely no traditions of physical contests for the mere exhilaration of feeling the play of muscles in friendly rivalry…” [Townsend 33:104]
6. • “In China, you practically never see anyone exercizing or playing sports. The factories that manufacture all those Olympic gold-medal winners are not open to the general public.” [Parfitt 12:76]
• “With the tens of thousands of Chinese men in foreign schools equipped with gymnasiums and often with physical education directors, it is interesting that there are no Chinese athletes. And even among the Chinese adopted and brought up in foreign families, reluctance to exercise appears strong. Those [Asian] tennis players you see on American campuses are nearly always Japanese, not Chinese.” [Townsend 33:104]
• See the [Smith 94:92-3] citation, above.
7. • The only two players born in China who have ever played in MLB are White: Harry Kingman and Austin Brice.
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_players_from_China
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IV-2. Storytelling, art, and fantasy.
A. Whites are more imaginative in literature and the arts.
A creative mind is naturally evinced by original and imaginative compositions (section III-2.F) and artistic creations. Such ‘excursions’ will seem wasteful to a mind intent on efficient production.
Whites have been more imaginative than Chinese in literature, religion, art, and music. Whereas Europe has a long history of mythological traditions, China has very little indigenous mythology and no great epics of fiction [1]. Chinese folk gods are portrayed to behave as humans [2]. The fantastical realms and characters of Indian Buddhism were dismissed or converted by the Chinese into ‘historic’ personages [3], and little interest was shown in the heavenly aspects of Christianity [4]. Chinese philosophical writings are platitudinous [5], and Chinese literature in general is loaded with often-unattributed quotations (copy-pastes) of past writers, as well as allusions, cliches, and stereotypes [6]. Chinese writing tends to be brief and economical [7]. Chinese art likewise tends to be brief and efficient, typically drawing only the outlines of figures and natural scenes [8]. Whereas European artists sought originality and developed many artistic styles, Chinese artists in painting as with literature usually closely imitated masters of the past [9]. Chinese music is also much simpler than European; it is mostly monophonic [10], as opposed to the rich polyphonic melodies of White composers [11].
1. • “One of the most important characteristics of Chinese psychology is its reliance on sense-perception. They reluctantly dwell on that which is beyond the immediately perceived. In novels, for example, they tend to recreate the tangible world of sense-perception. Of course, there are exceptions such as the Hsi-yu-chi (Records of Travel in Western Regions) but works of this genre are far fewer and less influential than realistic writing.” [Nakamura 64:180]
; “This characteristic trait of [the Chinese] way of thinking [a “high regard for particulars, presented concretely”] has influenced the growth of various forms of Chinese art. There is a definite limit to the force of artistic imagination of the Chinese. Their attitude of observing only those things that can be concretely experienced, that are grasped specifically through sensory effects directly perceived, weakens their power of imagination. This is the reason why in China no epic has been produced, although novels and a kind of drama, which combine concreteness and reality, developed on a large scale…
The Chinese, too, under the T’ang and the Sung dynasties, produced excellent poems, but most of the ideas expressed were concrete and stayed within the natural laws of time and space. In the later T’ang dynasty, there were people like Li Chang-chi (791–817), a poet who was unusually imaginative, but the basic, individual ideas contained in his poetry are not very imaginative.” [217]
; “The tendency of Chinese thinking to dwell on the actual daily life of man leads to a worldly and materialistic outlook. Such a tendency appeared in various cultural spheres.
First, it can be said that there is very little mythology in Chinese writings; especially in connection with the process of how the sky, earth, sun, moon, and human beings were created. Although some mythological explanations exist in such collateral records as…, this sort of explanation is scarcely found in the traditional and authoritative scriptures and records of China. The first record which is described in the Shih-chi, a history of ancient China written by Ssu-man Tan (d. 110 B.C.) and his son Ssu-ma-ch’ien (145–86 B.C.), is a record of five Lords who are regarded as the first human beings. Yet, supernatural and incredible stories are not mentioned in this history. From ancient times, the Chinese writers have very little use for the mythological imagination and preferred a practical and worldly realism…” [235]
• “In the West, the existence since early times of the epic and the tragedy did much to shape the writing of biography along lines of conflict and changing personality. In China both literary forms were absent.” [Bodde 91:287]
2. • “[J]ust as men were treated as gods, so gods behaved like men; and as Chinese civilization became more bureaucratic, so this was reflected in the common belief in a divine bureaucracy which was modelled very closely on its human counterpart… It had the same paraphernalia of filing systems and red tape associated with the earthly bureaucracy and the same kind of rules of protocol… City gods, who filled a role in this divine bureaucracy comparable with that of the district magistrate among living bureaucrats, were graded according to the size of the territory they administered; and they occupied what were envisaged as official posts…[These gods interacted with human officials, etc.]…
In literature gods are often depicted as behaving in a totally human fashion. There is, for example, a Ming Dynasty play about a god who is a rapist being fought and wounded by a soldier, and later demoted by the emperor at the soldier’s request…[more examples]… In late imperial China, gods were routine figures, who had all the vices, and even some of the virtues, of human beings.” [Dawson 78:168-9]
• “Various folk religions existed in China from ancient times and exerted their influence not only on the common people, but also on intellectuals who partly followed these religions. Certain supernatural beings beyond human power were invoked. From ancient times, ancestor worship was an important ceremony in China by which the family and its prosperity were upheld. It was therefore impossible to change this sort of worship into a supernatural and metaphysical religion. ” [Nakamura 64:235-6]
• “A little examination of Chinese ideas of religion reveals much that is significant. To begin, their sages have reverenced Confucius conspicuously, but not in the sense of religious adoration. The feeling was philosophic accolade and an avowed obligation of emulation. The common people know only vaguely of Confucianism and Buddhism and Taoism, terms which among them are mere misnomer identifications of misty superstitions and propitiatory rites, having little or no connection with tenets of organized religious cults. If you ask the average illiterate Chinese what religion he belongs to or believes in, he will not comprehend the question…
There is not among the Chinese anything akin to the religious sense as it prevails in India, the Semitic world, among Negroes, Latins, or Southerners of the United States… The run-of-the-mill Chinese was never molested by the priest, and the temples were and are used almost wholly for propitiatory offerings in times of distress, or for good luck on the birthday of a son or some such felicitous occasion.” [Townsend 33:150-1]
3. • “The Chinese modified the Indian phantasmagoric myths, so remote from historical reality, so that the mythological beings were identified respectively with actual historical persons (euhemerism). Thus, for example, the Buddhist divinity Yama, King of Hell, or Yen-lo in Chinese, became identified with a Sui dynasty official who died in 592 A.D.” [Nakamura 64:196;201-2]
; “Chinese Buddhism was also influenced by this wordly trend of thought. Indian Buddhism was generally a metaphysical teaching about the past and future worlds of man, but the Buddhism which spread among the common Chinese was often a Buddhism of spells and prayers.” [236]
; “The Chinese thus disliked the mysterious, imaginary, and illusionary atmosphere surrounding Buddhism. Therefore, the Chinese who opposed Buddhism often attacked and criticized it at this point. In Zen Buddhism, these illusory fantasies were clearly disliked. Although it cannot be said that no mysterious tendency exists in Zen Buddhists, they acknowledge mysticism only in nature or in the events of daily life, and seldom refer to inconceivable miracles or fantastic mysteries. An example of this can be found in the following questions and answers…
Furthermore, Zen Buddhism in China did not teach that one could be transported to heaven by practicing Zen meditation…
Chinese philosophers also were very indifferent to man’s destiny after death. They thought it is useless to ask about the world after death since the present world itself cannot even be understood well…
According to the Zen doctrine, therefore, the divine power or the miraculous function taught in Buddhism is none other than such daily activities as “fetching water and carrying firewood.” In other words, they are not miraculous experiences. Furthermore, Zen Buddhism in China did not teach that one could be transported to heaven by practicing Zen meditation…
The problem of eschatology which discusses man’s destiny after death was discussed very little and hardly existed in China. According to the way of thinking of the Chinese, death is a necessary phenomenon for birth. Therefore, they faced death composedly and did not worry about life after death…
Chinese Buddhism, however, gradually became harmonized and mixed with popular folk religions or Taoism and again became a worldly religion. As Fung Yu-lan aptly says, we must distinguish Buddhism in China from Chinese Buddhism. ” [239-40]
4. • “Generally speaking, the Indian Christians highly esteem the church and the faith, and they are other-worldly, transcendental, and mystical. Chinese Christians, on the contrary, are generally this-worldly, humanistic, realistic, and pragmatic. Because they are, furthermore, political and practical, they are generally indifferent to supernatural considerations concerning the transcendency of the Gospel or the relation between God and man.” [Nakamura 64:244]
5. • “To get an idea of what the Chinese students had to say I read from time to time dozens of their compositions on political and related topics. They were all of the Chinese elliptical truism order – usually starting out with some such platitude as that the ideal state was one where everybody had enough and nobody had too much, then proceeding through a tiresome succession of words to prove that states not of this kind have disadvantages, and then coming back to the opening obviousness with a Q. E. D. ring of triumph, settling the matter completely.
Nine-tenths of any Chinese composition will be simple statements of what constitutes no information at all, such as that starvation is to be deplored, oppressive tyranny is bad, and that good government is better than bad government. They make concentric rings and ellipses out of these triumphs of discernment, never proceeding to anything new or anything reflecting objective observation, in a manner to give an Occidental a headache in five minutes. They quote or paraphrase always in terms of what is initially self-evident.
Just as the Chinese mentality lacks real inventiveness, it emphatically lacks constructiveness in all abstract fields. Their leading writers and speakers are ninety-nine per cent of the same stamp, as witness any Chinese magazine or newspaper, or the theses Chinese university students are prone to polish off in this country. The modern writer whom the Chinese most revere, Sun Yatsen, reveals everywhere this academic negativity. He tells what ought not to be done, but in stating what should be done he goes little farther than saying that he wants China to be a land of cooperating workers living happily. Out of the thousands of Chinese students with the best education the world can provide it is one of the amazing contemporary phenomena that they have produced no thinkers of any rating.” [Townsend 33:189-90]
• A review of the writings and ideas of leading Chinese philosophers, such as Confucius, evinces that they are simplistic compared to the writings and ideas of the great White philosophers. No groundbreaking Chinese work has been written in the past 2,000 years.
6. • “Most Chinese think it better to imitate in their writing the ways of expression used by their predecessors rather than to contrive new styles by their own efforts. Ability in writing was always closely tied to a knowledge of the classics. Therefore, classical Chinese texts consisted of a series of phrases or idioms generally taken from old texts; the foremost of these texts are the classics called the “ching.”
As a consequence, texts abound in literary and historical allusions, which is the result of the Chinese attachment to ways of expression based on historical particularity; for example, “Ssu-mien Ch’u-ko”—”to find oneself surrounded by enemies”; “Hsien Wêi Shih”—”to begin with oneself.” In both of these instances, a phrase or a sentence denoting a single historical event is used to convey a universal, abstract concept. In the arts also, artistic effects are heightened and a powerful stimulus is given to the viewer or reader through the medium of historical allusions or quotations from the classics. Such productions as the Yüan drama (Ch’ü-tzu) as well as the modern Ching-chü are essentially a series of historical allusions and set literary phrases.” [Nakamura 64:204-5]
• “A basic feature of Chinese traditional prose is the extensive use of quotations and allusions: more of them in literary compositions, fewer in ordinary exposition, but always a possibility for which the reader should remain eternally on guard. Achilles Fang puts the matter very forcefully when he writes (probably with literary prose primarily in mind): “Practically every important piece of writing dating before 1916 (and even some subsequent to that date) abounds in allusions, cliches, parallelism, stock-in-trade emotions, and ancient tradition.” He later adds that it is “not so easy to be able to recognize a quotation or allusion as such; a second sight or a sixth sense is perhaps needed for this.”…
Unnamed quotations are by definition much more difficult. They consist of a sentence, clause, or phrase quoted without identification from some earlier source and commonly inserted into the new text with no indication that a quotation is involved. The absence of anything like quotation marks in Literary Chinese prior to their introduction from the West early this century made such concealment naturally easy. It is at this point that the reader, unless equipped with the encyclopedic literary knowledge traditionally taken for granted, has to develop that “second sight or sixth sense” mentioned by Fang. Hardest of all, however, are allusions, that is to say, paraphrases or condensations of earlier writings (sometimes, as we shall see, reduced to a single word) that are inserted into the test to impress or, just possibly, to mystify the reader. [Therefollows several pages of examples.]…
The use, in a document purporting to give an eyewitness account of a living ceremony, of statements taken verbatim from ritualistic writings raises a problem that, with variations, sooner or later confronts anyone dealing with Chinese historical documents. That is, to what extent can statements that are overlaced with quotations or allusions be taken at face value? To what extent does such language merely convey a symbolic picture of what is being described?…
We pass now from quotation, allusion, cliche, analogy, and historical precedent as building stones in the construction of small units of expository prose to the further question of how these units are in turn ordered and combined to form the larger blocks constituting essays and books. The answer, very commonly, is by “scissors-and-paste”; the larger composition is created by fitting together, usually in chronological sequence, a variety of relevant sources that may or may not be identified by name, but are usually quoted verbatim or, less often, in shortened paraphrase…
“Composition through compilation” is a principle probably as widely applied in nonhistorical as in historical writings. The primary difference is that in the former the quoted sources are commonly arranged chronologically in successive discrete units identified by name, whereas in histories… they are woven together into a continuous narrative and hence are rarely explicitly named… In the great Chinese encyclopedias the principle of quotation has been extended still further to the point where the compilers add no writing of their own; everything consists of longer or shorter quotations culled from thousands of earlier works, which are chronologically arranged under topics and subtopics.
With this complete triumph of “quotationism,” the time has come to raise a basic question: has the reliance on quotation and the other literary devices discussed in the preceding section, as well as on compilation by scissors-and-paste, had any serious effect on scholarly writing in China?
In my opinion, the effect has been both considerable and unfavorable. First of all, we have noted the burden on memory imposed by quotations and allusions. Second, we have also seen how quotations can become facile substitutes for genuine description, and throw doubt on the reality of what is being told… The practice of filling pages with successive blocks of quotations interrupted only briefly by the writer’s own discussion still lingers among a fair number of Chinese (and Japanese) scholars.” [Bodde 91:74-85]
• This prevalent plagiarism continues today: “Part of the reason why Asians cannot think for themselves and make original and creative contributions to science is because they are too conformist. One of the factors that Miller identifies as a possible obstacle to the Asian future of evolutionary psychology (“academic conservatism”) is actually fatal. Scientific revolutions happen by challenging the established paradigms. No conformists have ever brought about a scientific revolution.
Once again, at LSE, we have an enormous problem of plagiarism among our Asian students. Despite the fact that each student, Asian or otherwise, must sign a declaration that their work is original and they have not plagiarized, many Asian students simply copy the work of established scholars. To them it is a venerable act of honoring their masters to “borrow” from them, by copying their words verbatim.” [Kanazawa 06:4-5]
• “The same attitude is reflected in popular fiction, in which good and bad characters are stereotyped. For example, only two types of courtesan seem to appear: the cruel one who squanders a man’s money and leaves him penniless, and the tender-hearted one who helps her indigent lover through his studies. The ancient Classics as well as later popular literature frequently use the device of taking a man’s name as symbolical of the stereotyped quality he is famous for.” [Dawson 78:80]
; “There were different styles in the north and south, but all Chinese drama has certain features in common. There are a limited number of character-types, and actors specialize in one of these; and there is a bare minimum of scenery.” [248]
7. • “The paucity of grammatical words and the ability to dispense with words indicating person, number, and tense unless they are relevant gives the language a magnificent economy, which is its main characteristic. This shows itself in the penchant for pithy sayings which is characteristic of Chinese literature and thought from the Analects of Confucius to the modern political slogan. The lack of person, number, and tense also brings the impersonality, universality, and timelessness which are the great qualities of Chinese poetry, enabling it to achieve the same abstractness as the painter achieved in his generalized portrayal of the essence of mountains… As a vehicle of philosophical thought it is plain that it is not the kind of language which could have nurtured some of the problems which have preoccupied Western thinkers throughout the ages.” [Dawson 78:235-6]
• “Another grammatical feature causing numerous difficulties is what Dobson (1959) calls “the rule of economy.” By this he means that although certain grammatical devices (notably the particles) do exist in Literary Chinese to indicate verb mood, noun number, nominalization of words, and the like, their use is by no means always mandatory and depends very much on the whim of the writer…
Much the same point has been expressed by Victor Purcell in language much less scholarly, more intemperate, but for that reason more arresting:
‘The rule is, if you can possibly omit, do so. The result may be that the meaning is quite hidden, but the reader is supposed not only to have an encyclopedic knowledge to assist him in his guesswork, but to have unlimited time for filling in ellipses. This does not mean that the language has no words to fill in the elipses, or that there are no words to convey tense, number, or mood. It merely means that the spirit of the language is against their use.'” [Bodde 91:34-5]
8. • “The same skills which the calligrapher develops to bring out the beauties of the Chinese script are transferred to the craft of setting down on paper or silk the shorthand versions of nature which is what Chinese landscape painting consists of. Painting is, in a sense, a kind of calligraphy.” [Dawson 78:201]
; “This sense of restraint also marked the technique of portraying the features and personalities of individuals. Faces tend to be shown as impassive, the expression being only very slightly and very subtly depicted… Interest in the human figure was always slight, except for the time when Buddhist influence brought a certain sensuousness into sculpture.” [208]
; “As far as technique is concerned, the essential style of monochrome ink painting, in which the brush moved in a flash to give immediate response to the painter’s inspiration, was ideally suited to the Ch’an temperament… [T]he subject matter of Ch’an paintings was varied, and included economically executed portraits of Ch’an patriarchs, abbreviated landscapes, or strange, shocking pictures like Two Minds in Harmony, designed to jolt the reader into awareness.” [210-1]
; “Later there was a shift of interest from the dominant mountain to a microcosm in which one little scene would speak for all, and even further to the style of ‘one corner’ Ma, who pushed his simple and economical compositions to one corner so that the philosopher sitting in the picture could gaze out into the limitless space of the rest of the paper. But whatever style the painter adopted, it always reflected the fastidious sense of design which flowed naturally from his calligraphic training…
At this time [T’ang] there were, according to later Chinese art historians, two main schools of landscape painting. One was characterized by precise outlines and the predominant colours were blues and greens, and the other was the familiar monochrome ink landscape, which soon gained the upper hand because its calligraphic nature made it the more congenial mode of expression for the amateur scholar-painters, who naturally began to dominate taste as the scholar-bureaucrat class became dominant in politics and society. The more precise and less imaginative style naturally became the province of professional and court painters. The T’ang was a period of towering mountains and vast panoramas, peopled with tiny figures. The Sung turned to more intimate and more romanticized scenes; and under the Mongols, when the tradition was maintained by scholars who were in retreat from the world, the style became more withdrawn, abstract, and calligraphic.” [214-5]
9. • “[T]he final principle [“by which a painting should be judged” in China] stresses the need for a painter to learn his art by studying and copying old masters… What the painter sought was not originality, but a feeling of identity both with nature and with the traditional ways in which it was represented. In China age always took precedence over beauty, so imitation of the past was naturally the painter’s first concern.” [Dawson 78:219]
; “Copies [of ancient bronze vessels] were made because of the reverence for antiquity which was characteristic of the Sung, in exactly the same spirit as the Neo-Confucians tried to revive the country by seeking the truth enshrined in the ancient texts.” [231]
10. • “In the past it was widely assumed by musicologists, both Chinese and foreign, that Chinese music was purely monophonic. However, with the discovery of musics of the minority nationalities it was found that poly-phonic music exists in China.” [Penyeh 98:3] In other words, there are a few marginal exceptions to China’s simple music among China’s minority nationalities.
11. • See section V-3.M and its sources.
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B. Whites are also more technologically imaginative.
Europe’s imaginative literature extends to the realm of machines and technology. Since about 1200, White philosophers and artists have enthusiastically anticipated the potential of technological advance. They drew up fantastical blueprints of energy-harnessing machines, self-powered carriages, airplanes, and the like, long before their descendants developed the necessary technology. Beginning at about 1400, illustrated technological fantasy books were published in Germany, France, and Italy, called theatrum machinarum. Some of their machines eventually came into being [1]. No such tradition of speculative technology existed in China [2].
1. • See in section IV-1.A the sources on science being a close cousin of exploration.
• “Technological dreams are the machines, proposals, and visions generated by the technical community, whether in the Renaissance or the present time. They epitomize the technologists’ propensity to go beyond what is technically feasible. Fanciful creations of this kind provide an entry into the richness of the imagination and into the sources of the novelty that is at the heart of Western technology. They also challenge the conventional depiction of the technologist as a rational, pragmatic, and unemotional person dominated by a utilitarian outlook.
Technological extrapolations are the first examples of the playful creations that emanate from technical minds. The majority of these are relatively conservative ventures well within the bounds of possibility, perhaps a step or so beyond the current state of technology; they normally offer no serious challenge to the status quo. Nevertheless, most of these extrapolations will probably never be constructed (Figure 111.1). For this reason, they might be thought of as imaginative exercises, or as elegant variations, based upon well-known technological themes. Because these working devices and apparatuses exist for the most part as illustrations in books, they are not only the dreams of the technologists who first created them but also of all those who have subsequently enjoyed contemplating and learning from the ingenious solutions they supply.
The contents of the machine books dating from the Renaissance provide an excellent opportunity to some the dreams of early modern technologists. Between 1400 and 1600 a number of elaborately illustrated books of this sort were published in Germany, France, and Italy. Some of them were descriptive in nature, accurately presenting current technological practices and artifacts in fields such as mining and metallurgy. But another, and very influential, group of them contained hundreds of pictures of machines that were extrapolated from existing technology. These volumes were repositories of novelties that had not yet been built but that were depicted with such care and authenticity that they might possibly be constructed in the future. Theatrum machinarum (theater of machines) was the title given to these books, and rightly so for they presented technology as a spectacle for the enjoyment and instruction of the reading audience…
Economic necessity certainly was not the motivating force behind the plethora of technological novelties. They were the products of a fertile imagination that took delight in itself and in its ability to operate within the constraints of the possible, if not the useful. Some of the novel mechanisms pictured in the machine books were later incorporated into practical devices; others stand unused as proof of the fertility of the contriving mind.” [Basalla 88:67-9]
; “Technological visions, the final category of technological dreams, are bold and fantastic schemes ranging from the improbable to the edge of the impossible. The are the means which technologists for the past five hundred years have used to express the most extravagently fanciful aspect of their innovative activity. Yet these visions should not be confused with science fiction. As creations of the technological, not the literary or popular, imagination they are essentially an exaggerated form of the element of play found earlier in extrapolations and patents (Figure III-3)…
The most famous collection of Renaissance visionary machines was not revealed to the public until late in the nineteenth century. It was hidden away in the unpublished personal notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). Leonardo’s drawings contain some of the best examples of fanciful devices ever produced. Among them are sketches of flying machines (both powered and free flight), parachutes, armored tanks, gigantic crossbows and catapults, a small battleship, multibarreled guns, a steam engine, and a steam cannon. He also offered plans for paddle boats, diving suits, various dredging vessels, and a self-propelled, spring-powered wagon…” [71-2]
; “Popular technological fantasies can be traced back at least to the thirteenth century when philosopher Roger Bacon prophesied that large ships, without oars or sails, would navigate rivers and seas; vehicles, without animals to pull them, would move rapidly over land; flying machines, with wings that beat like a bird’s, would glide through the air; and humans, using diving bells, would explore the bottom of the ocean. Similar prophecies have long enjoyed popularity in the Western world. Industrialization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries nurtured the predilection for fanciful technological predictions and institutionalized it in the popular arts. Of these arts, science fiction became the single most important source of fantastic machines. Examples include Jules Verne’s submarines and spacecraft, H. G. Wells’s time machine, Karel Capek’s robots, and the starships and laser weaponry that dazzle the modern science fiction moviegoer…
Scientific/technical journalism, as exemplified by Popular Science, Science and Mechanics, Mahanix Illustrated, and Popular Mechanics, completes the genre. Begun at the turn of the century and aimed at working-class men and boys, these magazines present a strange mix of home improvement tips, plans for workshop projects, technological visions, and the promise of utopia through technology. In the past decade the utopian visions were repackaged in slick and more expensive popular science journals such as Omni, which combined science fact and fiction and catered to readers with a higher level of sophistication and education. Yet, no matter what the intended audience, popular science journalism has continued to be one of the purveyors of technological fantasies to a wide public.” [75-7]
• “Villard de Honnecourt’s [1200-1250] sketchbook is astonishingly similar to Leonardo’s famous notebooks. This is by no means fortuitous. Both men, though separated by 250 years and living in two different historical periods, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, received roughly the same education, that of the mechanical arts. Both men belonged to a tradition where notebooks such as theirs were common and circulated quite freely. No less than 150 manuscripts of this type, ranging from the end of the fourteenth century to the very first years of the sixteenth century, have been recorded. If Leonardo never had the opportunity of consulting Villard’s sketchbook, we know that he consulted many manuscripts of engineers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In fact, a French scholar has recently shown that a great many of the inventions attributed to Leonardo da Vinci are to be found in one form or another in the manuscripts of engineers such as Konrad Kyeser (born in 1366), Roberto Valturio (born in 1413), and Francesco di Giorgio (born in 1439). Leonardo even annotated one of Francesco di Giorgio’s manuscripts.” [Gimpel 76:142]
2. • “[W]idespread fantasization of technology is primarily a Western phenomenon. The examples cited here [12 pages of them] are not the result of a deliberate and parachial concentration on European and American sources. It would have been impossible to assemble a comparable set from the records of any other of the great civilizations.” [Basalla 88:77]
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IV-3. Tests of perception, categorization, and reasoning.
A. Tests indicate that Whites perceive more abstractly than Chinese.
Various experimental tests have been done comparing the perception of scenes, categorization of objects, and reasoning with principles by Whites and Chinese/Asians. The results show that Whites perceive objects more discretely, classify objects more according to abstract properties/functions, and incorporate principles more broadly (i.e. generate more specific instances of abstract categories), than do Chinese/Asians. Some of the test groups were Asian-Americans, who usually score intermediate between Whites and native Asians. This is claimed by egalitarian interpreters to indicate a cultural rather than genetic basis of difference, as they pretend to be ignorant of the fact that culture is itself largely a product of genetics.
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B. Whites perceive objects more discretely and recognize them better in novel contexts; Chinese perceive scenes more concretely and memorize background details better.
Perception tests assess the degree to which a subject perceives and memorizes a foreground, focal object in a scene compared to the background context and details. Whites notice more changes in foreground objects, while Asians noticed more changes in background objects [1]. Asians are better able to recall background details than are Whites; Whites are better able to recognize the focal object when presented within a novel background than are Asians [2], who evidently memorized it concretely together with its context. This is evidence that Whites perceive objects more discretely and are more apt to consider them in novel contexts, a basis of creativity (section III-2).
In tests showing a focal bar/line within a background frame, Whites are better able to judge the verticality of the bar despite changes in the orientation of the frame [3], and given a new frame, better able to reproduce the actual size of the original line; while Asians are better able to draw a new line of the same relative proportion to the new frame as in the original scene [4]. This again indicates that Whites focus more on the object while Asians perceive and memorize it concretely together with its background. On Rorshchach ink-blot perception tests, Asians are more likely to ‘interpret’ the entire image; Whites are more likely to interpret a part of it [5]. On Navon Figures tests, in which many copies of a small letter make up a large letter figure, Asians are more likely to perceive the composite letter first; Whites the small component letter [6]. Presented with a ‘face’ collage composed of vegetables, Asians are more likely to perceive the full face; Whites the vegetable components [7]. In all these tests, Whites perceive more discretely and analytically; Asians more concretely.
1. • [Nisbett 03:93-5]; [Masuda 06].
2. • [Nisbett 03:89-92]; [Masuda 01]; [Chua 05].
3. • [Nisbett 03:101-2]
4. • [Kitayama 03]
5. • [Bond 91:23]
6. • [McKone 10]
7. • [Rozin 16]
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C. Whites more actively focus upon objects and consider their properties.
Physiological tests done in conjunction with such perception tests show that Whites’ greater attention to foreground, focal objects is not just a matter of selective memory. Whites were found to look more quickly at the focal object and to fixate upon it longer, than do Asians [1]. A study using an MRI scan found that when looking upon scenes Whites activate more brain regions implicated in object processing than do Asians [2]. This is evidence that Whites’ more discrete perception of objects is based on having a greater inclination to act upon them (focusing the senses being itself an action); a greater urge to act upon random objects being a basis of creativity (section III-2).
1. • “We measured the eye movements of American and Chinese participants while they viewed photographs with a focal object on a complex background. In fact, the Americans fixated more on focal objects than did the Chinese, and the Americans tended to look at the focal object more quickly. In addition, the Chinese made more saccades to the background than did the Americans. Thus, it appears that differences in judgment and memory may have their origins in differences in what is actually attended as people view a scene.
A growing literature suggests that people from different cultures have differing cognitive processing styles. Westerners, in particular North Americans, tend to be more analytic than East Asians. That is, North Americans attend to focal objects more than do East Asians, analyzing their attributes and assigning them to categories. In contrast, East Asians have been held to be more holistic than Westerners and are more likely to attend to contextual information…” [Chua 05]
2. • “Behavioral research suggests that Westerners focus more on objects, whereas East Asians attend more to relationships and contexts. We evaluated the neural basis for these cultural differences in an event-related fMRI study. East Asian and American participants incidentally encoded pictures of (1) a target object alone, (2) a background scene with no discernable target object, and (3) a distinct target object against a meaningful background. Americans, relative to East Asians, activated more regions implicated in object processing, including bilateral middle temporal gyrus, left superior parietal/angular gyrus, and right superior temporal/supramarginal gyrus…
As is shown in Table 3A, the Americans activated more regions within the object-specific mask than did the East Asians, consistent with our hypothesis. Most of these differences occurred in posterior cortical regions, including areas of the left superior parietal gyrus extending into the angular gyrus, the right superior temporal gyrus extending into the supramarginal gyrus, and the left middle temporal gyrus (see Figure 2)…
The Americans’ increased object-based processing is consistent with the finding that Americans attend to individual objects more than do East Asians. Areas activated more by Americans when complex scenes are processed include the left middle temporal gyrus (BA 20/21), an area involved in retrieval of semantic knowledge about objects. The angular gyrus (BA 39) was also preferentially employed by the Americans, and it is engaged by processing cross-modal information, consistent with the ability of pictures to cue access of verbal semantic knowledge. The Americans also activated the right superior temporal/ supramarginal and superior parietal gyrus more than did the Asians. These regions respond to spatial information in tasks including location judgments and maintenance of spatial information in working memory. Sommer, Rose, Weiller, and Büchel (2005) found that superior parietal activation tracked the success of the encoding of object locations. The involvement of these regions within the object-processing mask may suggest that Americans are more analytic about object features, attending more to the semantic and spatial properties of the focal object than do East Asians.” [Gutchess 06]
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D. Whites more associate objects according to their effects/function than their context.
Grouping tests assess how subjects perceive relationships between items that they must group together by similarity. Whites are more likely to group items that have an abstract similarity of property or function (e.g. both fruits, or both cutting tools); while Asians are more likely to group items that happen to appear or interact together (e.g. cow with grass, or mother with baby) [1]. This is evidence that Whites consider the abstract function of objects, as opposed to the contexts they have existed in; a basis of creativity (section III-2). In a similar grouping test, Whites are more likely than Asians to group objects according to their common shape (but differing material), rather than common material (but differing shape) [2]; an object’s shape being a better indicator of its function than its surface appearance.
1. • [Bond 91:23-4]; [Bond 86:53]; [Nisbett 03:140-1].
2. • [Nisbett 03:81-2]
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E. Whites apply principles more robustly, even when implausible, thus considering more potentialities.
Reasoning tests show that Whites apply principles more robustly than do Asians. One type of test presented pairs of arguments and asked subjects which was more convincing. The arguments were simple deductive reasoning: applying a principle having an abstract category antecedent (e.g. All birds have ulnar arteries) to an instance of the category (Therefore all eagles have ulnar arteries). Whites were equally convinced by arguments when the instance was atypical of the category (e.g. penguins), while Asians were less convinced by such arguments [1]. On a more complex deductive reasoning test, Asians made more errors when the consequent seemed implausible for a given instance of the principle’s category (e.g. Therefore cigarettes are good for health) [2]. On a third reasoning test, Asians were less convinced by arguments indicating an undesirable outcome than were Whites (e.g. The price of dining out will increase) [3].
These results indicate that Whites are more apt to apply principles to objects and situations encountered, even when 1) the match with the antecedent is marginal, or 2) the consequent is contrary to what was expected, or 3) the consequent is undesired. Thus, Whites consider more potential effects (properties and uses) and outcomes of objects and situations, a basis of creativity (section III-2).
1. • [Nisbett 03:168-9]
2. • [Nisbett 03:169-71]
3. • [Nisbett 03:171-3]
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F. Whites consider and resolve contradictions more robustly.
Whites also proved to be more concerned about contradictions between principles and instances of them than did Asians. Whites prefer proverbs that do not contain contradictions, while Asians prefer proverbs that *do* [1]. When shown one or the other of a pair of contradictory propositions (principles), Whites consistently agreed with one and disagreed with the other; while Asians were likely to agree with both [2]. Whites were likewise more consistent when asked whether they agree or disagree with two contrary attributes about themselves; while Asians tended to affirm both [3]. Whites tended to believe the more plausible of two contrary ‘study results’ more strongly after being shown the second one; while Asians afterwards tended to believe them both equally [4].
These results indicate that Whites evaluate the meaning, implications and accuracy of supposed principles more robustly than do Asians, perceiving them more abstractly in order to incorporate their antecedents with all known instances including those having contrary consequents. Whites thereby perceive and resolve contradictions that don’t concern Asians, an indication of greater creativity (section III-2.E).
1. • [Nisbett 03:173-4]
2. • [Nisbett 03:186-7]
3. • [Nisbett 03:186]
4. • [Nisbett 03:180-3]
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IV-4. Language: Analytic clarity versus ornate form.
A. White language is more analytic and abstract; Chinese is more pictographic and concrete.
The languages of Whites and Chinese differ as expected based on Whites being more abstract- and Chinese being more concrete-perceivers. A concrete-perceiver is more inclined to see the actual context of language symbols beyond the discrete symbols themselves, and might therefore have greater difficulty ‘seeing’ the associated meaning. So, it’s not surprising that Chinese characters are more pictographic than Whites’, with many characters actually resembling their meanings [1]. In addition, many abstract concepts in Chinese are expressed in concrete terms; for example, the word meaning *contradiction* is composed of two characters meaning “axe” and “shield” [2]. Whites compose descriptions more analytically, using definite abstract categories (genus) with definite abstract modifiers (differentia). Chinese on the other hand has more-specific variants of word types, i.e. nouns that are more like proper nouns (etc.) [3].
1. • “The influence of language structure on thought can be seen in the way in which the characters are made. Chinese characters are, of course, originally hieroglyphic. The character which symbolizes the sun is derived from a drawing of a circle; another character symbolizes fire through a representation of flame. Later many phonetic characters were also devised, but these were based upon hieroglyphics. The four classic ways of constructing Chinese characters are, following Karlgren’s terminology: (1) hsiang hsing, image shapes (pictographs); (2) chih shih, pointing to situations (indirect symbols); (3) hui i, meeting of ideas (associative compounds); (4) hsing shêng, picture and sound (determinative phonetics). The two modes of transference are: (1) chuan chu, transferable meanings (mutually interpretative symbols); (2) chia chieh, borrowing (phonetic loan characters). Yet the hieroglyphs are fundamental to the characters developed by these six devices.” [Nakamura 64:177-8]
2. • “The Chinese way of expressing concepts is concrete. Thus for the term “epigraphy” the Chinese use the graphically concrete expression “writing on metal and stone.”
In the expression of attributive qualities they tend to use concrete numbers, thus for “a fast horse” they use ts’ien-li-ma “a horse good for a thousand li” (one li = 1890 feet); for a man endowed with clairvoyance they use the expression ts’ien-li-yen “thousand li vision.” These numbers are not used in a simple quantitative sense but symbolize qualities
which are expressed in Western languages in more abstract terms. The two characters mao-shun (“halberd and shield”) form a compound used to mean “contradiction,” and no other compound is used for expressing this concept…
The same associative process is revealed in the case of the character li (reason) which is of key importance in the history of Chinese philosophy. This character originally meant “well distributed veins on minerals or precious stones.” It eventually came to mean “principle” and finally “universal principle.”…
The tendency to express abstract philosophical ideas in concrete images is conspicuous in Zen Buddhism. The universe or cosmos is expressed as shan, ho, ta-ti, “mountains, rivers, and the great earth…
The use of concrete imagery is common not only to Buddhism but to Chinese philosophical writing in general…” [Nakamura 64:179-80]
• “How difficult it must have been for the very early Chinese to break away from particularized space-time conceptions is suggested by the written graphs for yu [character] and chou [character], the two words that, whether compounded as yu-chou or used separately within the same sentence, are the commonest respective designations for abstract space and abstract time. The fact that the two written forms both contain the graphic element for “roof” supplies the clue to their two original concrete meanings: the eaves of a “roof” (yu) and its (riblike) beams (chou). These meanings, coupled with the way these words appear in philosophical contexts, suggest certain conclusions…
The metaphors involved in the equating of yu, “eaves,” and chou, “roof-beams,” with “time” suggests a possible derivation from the cosmological theory known as the kai t’ien or “Heavenly Cover.” In this, the most primitive of Chinese conceptions of the physical universe, heaven was believed to be a hemisperical dome resting upon earth, which was conceived as an almost flat square with slightly sloping sides surrounded by bodies of water known as the “four seas”. In various texts, the heavenly dome is likened to an umbrella, a bamboo hat, or the umbrellalike covering of a carriage. Each of these metaphores involves a system of ribs spreading downward from a peaked center… It is natural enough to equate “space” with “earth,” and the equating of “time” with “heaven” is equally natural, since it is the movements of the heavenly bodies that give man an awareness of time.” [Bodde 91:106-7]
3. • “On the basis of a study of the vocabulary of the Book of Odes, Granet observed that Chinese concepts are expressed in highly concrete form. Nearly all words express particular ideas—forms of existing things perceived in a particular state. They aim at expressing things by individualization and specification rather than by analysis. For example, in the Book of Odes more than three thousand words are used: this seems a very large number in proportion to the limited number of ideas expressed. These words correspond to images of ideas which are complex and particular. In the book there are 18 words which might correspond to one concept “mountain” qualified by one or more adjectives. In the same work there are 23 words which mean “horse.”
On the other hand there is no one word which corresponds to a Western word expressing a general and abstract idea. Because of their synthetic and particular character Chinese words are more nearly proper nouns than the common nouns of Western languages—for example, the many words for “rivers”: ho, chiang, etc.” [Nakamura 64:178-9]
; “We have seen that the Chinese esteemed the data of direct perception, especially visual perception, and that they were concerned with particular instances. This meant that they were little interested in universals which comprehend or transcend individual or particular instances. They thus seldom created a universal out of particulars.
In Chinese one finds many different words used to denote subtly shaded variations of the same thing or action. Thus, for example, the following words are used for different shadings of the action word “to carry”: tan, chih, jen, yün, pan, pao, tai, cho. The same phenomenon can be seen in the languages of primitive peoples elsewhere. For example, in Malay there are many different words translatable simply as “carry” but which mean “to carry by hand,” “to carry on a shoulder,” “to carry on head,” “to carry on the back,” “to carry on the body, as a garment, a weapon, or an ornament,” “to carry a child in the womb,” etc. Although one can see the residue of some such variety in Greek and English generally, such a range of variant verbs does not exist. It may be said that in these languages, unlike Malay, a high degree of universalization and abstraction has been reached.
Another example. In Chinese there is no word which corresponds to the English “old.” For “sixty years or so” the Chinese word is ch’i; for “seventy years or more,” the Chinese word is tieh; for “eighty or ninety years old” the Chinese character is mao. Similarly, different words were used to express the notions of death and to die. The term varied according to the status of the person concerned. For the Emperor it was pêng; for feudal lords it was hung; for grandees, soldiers, gentlemen, it was pu-lu; for the common people ssu. We might draw the conclusion from such examples as these that the Chinese esteemed differences of rank more than they valued comprehending a group of related phenomena in a universal.
We do not mean that the Chinese completely lacked the concept of the universal. The existence of the concept of the universal among them is evidenced occasionally by the structure of the characters. For example, there are many words denoting different varieties of mountains, but these words include a common element shan which designates the universal of “mountain” or “mountainness.”
The above mentioned argument is not proof that all Chinese philosophers were unconscious of a relationship between universals and particulars. Hsün-tzu had a rather clear notion of this. He distinguished between common or general names (kung-ming) and particular names (pieh-ming). But he did not attain a full consciousness of “definition” as did Aristotle. He was not a logician by profession… But lack of this consciousness in a Chinese philosopher so far advanced in logical thinking is symptomatic of the general lack of consciousness of genus and differentia in the abstract among the Chinese.
Of course, efforts were made to express concepts more clearly using compound words. This device aimed at making the meaning of the word clearer by defining the extent of the meaning through a second character. This is quite different from the Greek practice which aimed at making the meaning clearer by limiting the genus with differentia.
So, generally speaking, the notion of a universal and the ordering of particulars under universals are not characteristic of Chinese thought. The Chinese, on the whole, did not have a hierarchy of universals as did the Greeks and the Indians.” [185-6]
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B. Chinese are more concerned with writing’s form and context.
The greater focus of the Chinese on writing’s context is evident in other ways. Chinese are more concerned than Whites with having orderly patterns (styles) that extend across lines of text. Chinese tend to write lines that are parallel in syllables and parts of speech (parallelism), and/or that alternate antonymous terms (antithesis) [1]. Whites of course have a place for poetry, but stylization tends to permeate all Chinese writing and awareness of it is sometimes crucial for interpreting meaning [2]. The greater Chinese regard for economy and brevity in writing (section IV-2.A) may also be in part a concern for aesthetic form [3]. Chinese greater concern for writing context and form is consistent with more concrete perception.
1. • “Stylistically, the dominant feature of Literary Chinese is its emphasis on syntactic and often semantic balance between successive cadence-units, each commonly consisting of the same number of monosyllables. The major manifestations of stylistic balance are parallelism and antithesis, whose great development in Literary Chinese is the direct result of the linguistic features enumerated in the preceding paragraph [absence of inflection, the option to omit grammatically significant indicators, and the wide range of meaning that individual written words can commonly assume]. The principle of balance, whether expressed in parallelism or antithesis, no doubt had its origin in stylistic considerations, but it became particularly significant as a grammatical device for reducing the possibility of syntactic or semantic ambiguity. At times, however, its use has resulted in verbal redundancy or the subordination of meaning to style.” [Bodde 91:91]
; Detailed discussion by Bodde of parallelism and antithesis and their consequences on pages [42-54].
2. • “No doubt parallelism and antithesis had their start as stylistic features, but so ubiquitous did they become in Literary Chinese that they have acquired grammatical significance as well. In other words, the skilled writer uses them not only for stylistic effect but also, quite deliberately, to give syntactic and semantic clarity to what he is saying. Thus they provide the reader with an indipensable tool for “parsing” the text, which he or she can ignore only at his peril. Supposing, for example, that there is a pair of parallel statements, of which one is clear in structure and meaning but the other is obscure. If, say, the third word in the clear statement is a verb, the reader will do well to assume that the corresponding word in the unclear statement is also a verb, even though in its case such verbal use may be quite exceptional.” [Bodde 91:45]
3. • “The paucity of grammatical words and the ability to dispense with words indicating person, number, and tense unless they are relevant gives the language a magnificent economy, which is its main characteristic. This shows itself in the penchant for pithy sayings which is characteristic of Chinese literature and thought from the Analects of Confucius to the modern political slogan. The lack of person, number, and tense also brings the impersonality, universality, and timelessness which are the great qualities of Chinese poetry, enabling it to achieve the same abstractness as the painter achieved in his generalized portrayal of the essence of mountains… As a vehicle of philosophical thought it is plain that it is not the kind of language which could have nurtured some of the problems which have preoccupied Western thinkers throughout the ages.” [Dawson 78:235-6]
• “We have already remarked about one of the liguistic difficulties of archaic Chinese written language for scientific discussions, namely its extreme brevity… I think, on the whole, that the written language and style of the long period of tradional China does not suit scientific or technological purposes because of it was excessively concise; it deliberately omitted punctuations (also, Han characters do not have capitals); and it overemphasized aesthetic symmetry, poetic effects, and classical allusions.” [Qian 85:59]
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C. Chinese language and writing is more ambiguous.
Interpreting inexplicit writing with particular meanings is a similar process to incorporating an abstract principle with particular instances of it (section III-2.B). The writer himself knows what meaning he intends, but in order to verify that it will be clear to others, he must incorporate his writing as broadly as possible with potential meanings to detect ambiguity, and when necessary make clarifications that eliminate it. A writer who fails to consider possible alternative interpretations of his writing will cede ambiguity and misunderstandings.
Chinese writing tends to be more ambiguous than White writing. Chinese words themselves tend to be poorly defined, and Chinese writers even in technical fields seldom make glossaries [1]. Chinese words can represent any part of speech and they lack inflections indicating type of noun, tense and mood of verb, etc. Chinese also lacks strict grammar rules and equivalents of pronouns, prepositions, and conjunctions, that are so useful in White languages [2]. Other sources of ambiguity in Chinese writing are: concerns for aesthetic form (discussed above), frequent use of archaic idioms and allusions [3], lack of punctuation (until recently) [4], and a relatively large number of words having multiple meanings [5]. Some clarifying devices are available, but Chinese writers tend not to make use of them, apparently unconcerned about the ambiguity [6]. The lower ambiguity of Whites’ writing, its greater clarity through the use of genus–differentia and explicit grammar rules, indicates more robust interpretation, an indication of greater creativity.
1. • “The lack of clearly defined words leads to ill-defined sentences, not only in classical texts, which are often nebulous and subject to varying interpretations, but even in modern scientific writing.” [Hannas 03:216-7]
• “In other fields of science [as well as in mathematics], the Chinese way of thinking generally lacked accuracy in defining, exactness in formulating, rigour in proving…” [Qian 85:67]
• “No doubt it is possible, as declared above by Needham, for modern students of Chinese science to draw up large glossaries of definable Chinese technical terms. What seems to me more significant, however, is the rarity with which indigenous Chinese scholars themselves have helped that possibility by drawing up their own systematic lists of defined terms…
Apropos Neo-Confucianism, Needham likewise comments on the unfortunate readiness of Chinese scholars and officials to continue using—even though in new philosophical contexts—the traditional terms belonging to superstitious folk religion, rather than creating a fresh terminology of their own…
“[M]y most trenchant criticism of Chinese literary devices and the techniques used for scholarly creation is that they have all served to turn Chinese scholarship away from substance and toward form, away from synthesis and generalization and toward compilation and commentary. Moreover… I strongly suspect that the nondefinition of terms, of which Richards complains in philosophy, is part of the same broader failure to analyze. So widespread, in fact, is this nondefinition in philosophy that it causes Graham to remark: “The later Mohist [~400–200 BC] ethic is an achievement quite without parallel in Chinese philosophy, a highly rationalized ethical system in which all key terms are defined.” [Bodde 91:96]
2. • “Whereas primitive languages are characterized by the extreme variety of verbal forms, Chinese is extremely poor on this point. It uses uninflected monosyllabic words; there is no distinction of parts of speech.” [Nakamura 64:177]
; “Grammatical Ambiguity of Chinese Language and Thought.
The distinctive character of Chinese thought is intimately connected with the peculiarities of the Chinese language. Words corresponding to the prepositions, conjunctions, and relative pronouns of Western languages are very rare. There is no distinction between singular and plural. A single character (jên) can denote “a man, men, some men, or mankind.” There are no fixed single terms for the expression of the tense or mood of verbs. There are no cases. One word can be noun, adjective, or verb. This kind of ambiguity explains why the exegesis of the classics has produced an immense variety of interpretations, many of which are directly opposite in sense to others.
We should not expect then that the Chinese language would be as suitable as the Greek for philosophizing. If the use of plural forms were essential in philosophy, we should have to regard the Aryan languages as more suitable than the Chinese for philosophy. However, for many aspects of ethics or practical philosophy, the linguistic distinction of numbers is not necessary. But the distinction between the singular and the plural is indispensable for logical mathematical thought.
Because of this tendency toward ambiguity the Chinese had great difficulty in understanding the meaning of the Buddhist scriptures which had originally been written in an entirely different type of language. Because of the lack of number, gender, and case in Chinese pronouns, sentences in the Chinese version of Buddhist writings were misinterpretations… This variety of interpretations—involving possible misinterpretation—is attributable to the lack of gender, number, or case notation in the demonstrative pronoun…
Because there are no plural forms of Chinese nouns, various devices are used to express the plural: adding numerals to nouns, e.g. wu-jen, ch’ien-jen; reduplication e.g., jen-jen; the addition of a character such as chu to nouns, e.g. chu-jen…
…Chinese frequently omits the subject of a sentence.” [186-8]
; “This parallels the lack of strict laws for linguistic expression. Indifference to or lack of consciousness of the necessity for rules of language meant that the grammar was not developed. Unlike the Greeks and the Indians, the ancient Chinese produced no works on grammar or syntax, although they engaged in elaborate investigations and compilations of characters, phonetics, etymology, etc. Even though some Chinese pilgrim monks became acquainted with the Indian science of grammar, they did not attempt to establish a parallel science of Chinese grammar. The science of grammar was very important in the history of Indian philosophy, whereas a scientific grammar was developed in China only after the impact of Western civilization.” [189]
• “In the spectrum of languages Chinese is at the opposite end from Latin being totally lacking in inflexion…In Chinese, [word order] is of vital importance, although there are devices for changing the normal subject-verb-object pattern for the sake of emphasis. Only context tells one whether a word is functioning as a noun, verb, or adjective, so the reader is constantly aware of words’ relationship to each other instead of seeing them in isolation…
Occasional signposts are provided in the form of conjunctions like ‘if’, ‘because’, ‘although’, or ‘but’ relating clauses to each other; but these are used most sparingly, since such relations between clauses are often clear without being specified–as in the saying ‘more haste, less speed’, in which ‘if’ is implied but not expressed. Most languages overdo the use of words or grammatical forms indicating tense’; indeed they have to express tense whether it is relevant or not. Chinese does not have to express tense, although words meaning ‘finish’ or ‘experience’ can be put in front of a verb to indicate that the action is over and done with, while the idea of ‘to be about to’ can also be expressed if it is really necessary to do so. Similarly, nouns may be either singular or plural but grammatical number can be indicated by use of words meaning ‘some’, ‘many’, ‘all’, ‘one’, and the like. ‘More haste, less speed’ gives an impression of pithiness which is characteristic of Chinese…
A good example of the versatility of a single Chinese word is *i*, meaning ‘one’, which is written with a single horizontal stroke. In different contexts this can be used as equivalent to the adjectives ‘one’, ‘first’, and ‘whole’, to the nouns ‘one’, ‘unity’, and ‘unification’, to the word ‘once’ functioning both as an adverb and as a conjunction (‘he did it once’ and ‘once he had done it’), and to the verb ‘to unify’ (which alone has a large array of variant forms in Latin).
The paucity of grammatical words and the ability to dispense with words indicating person, number, and tense unless they are relevant gives the language a magnificent economy, which is its main characteristic.” [Dawson 78:235-6]
• “[T]he most important characteristic of current Chinese… is its absence of inflection in the true sense of the word, the absence of word derivation, i.e., the formation of new words from a common stem, the absence of grammatical distinctions such as different forms for different word classes—all this which we call its ‘isolating nature’…
Our second topic is that of syntax and grammar. Words in Literary Chinese can, according to circumstances, commonly function in at least two, and more often several, grammatical roles (i.e., as nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc.). An effective example of this phenomenon is the frequent conversions of what are basically nouns or static verbs into transitive verbs. We saw this happen, for example, in the Meng-Tzu quotation of the preceding section, where yuan, ordinarily a static verb meaning “to be far, distant,” was made to function as a transitive verb, “to distance” (a thousand li). Because of the lack of any English equivalent, we had to render this very weakly as “to find-distant.” Of course the same phenomenon is widespread in other languages (cf. the verbalization of “man” in “to man the boats”), but in Chinese it is an especially common and effective stylistic device. And when it occurs in inflected languages—even one as little inflected as English—the verbalization is usually clearly indicated (e.g. “black” becomes “blacken,” but see also “man” above). In noninflected Chinese, on the other hand, this and other grammatical changes are enormously harder to detect…
[A]bsence of inflection makes it all too possible to arrive at more than one interpretation—each grammatically plausible—for the same phrase or sentence. And this in turn may sometimes distastrously affect one’s understanding of a considerable passage. At this point an adequate context—cultural as well as grammatical—becomes vital. Its absence makes the reading of fragmentary Chinese inscriptions often virtually impossible, and, as we shall see, the interpretation of some of the most important utterances in the Confucian Lun yu so uncertain. Although similar ambiguities can of course sometimes be found in the text of Indo-European or other languages, they are rarer and probably easier as a rule to overcome, owing to the existence of inflection.” [Bodde 91:32-4]
3. • “Most Chinese think it better to imitate in their writing the ways of expression used by their predecessors rather than to contrive new styles by their own efforts. Ability in writing was always closely tied to a knowledge of the classics. Therefore, classical Chinese texts consisted of a series of phrases or idioms generally taken from old texts; the foremost of these texts are the classics called the “ching.”
As a consequence, texts abound in literary and historical allusions, which is the result of the Chinese attachment to ways of expression based on historical particularity; for example, “Ssu-mien Ch’u-ko”—”to find oneself surrounded by enemies”; “Hsien Wêi Shih”—”to begin with oneself.” In both of these instances, a phrase or a sentence denoting a single historical event is used to convey a universal, abstract concept. In the arts also, artistic effects are heightened and a powerful stimulus is given to the viewer or reader through the medium of historical allusions or quotations from the classics. Such productions as the Yüan drama (Ch’ü-tzu) as well as the modern Ching-chü are essentially a series of historical allusions and set literary phrases.” [Nakamura 64:204-5]
• “A basic feature of Chinese traditional prose is the extensive use of quotations and allusions: more of them in literary compositions, fewer in ordinary exposition, but always a possibility for which the reader should remain eternally on guard. Achilles Fang puts the matter very forcefully when he writes (probably with literary prose primarily in mind): “Practically every important piece of writing dating before 1916 (and even some subsequent to that date) abounds in allusions, cliches, parallelism, stock-in-trade emotions, and ancient tradition.” He later adds that it is “not so easy to be able to recognize a quotation or allusion as such; a second sight or a sixth sense is perhaps needed for this…
Unnamed quotations are by definition much more difficult. They consist of a sentence, clause, or phrase quoted without identification from some earlier source and commonly inserted into the new text with no indication that a quotation is involved. The absence of anything like quotation marks in Literary Chinese prior to their introduction from the West early this century made such concealment naturally easy. It is at this point that the reader, unless equipped with the encyclopedic literary knowledge traditionally taken for granted, has to develop that “second sight or sixth sense” mentioned by Fang. Hardest of all, however, are allusions, that is to say, paraphrases or condensations of earlier writings (sometimes, as we shall see, reduced to a single word) that are inserted into the test to impress or, just possibly, to mystify the reader… [Therefollows several pages of examples.]” [Bodde 91:74-6]
; “With this complete triumph of “quotationism,” the time has come to raise a basic question: has the reliance on quotation and the other literary devices discussed in the preceding section, as well as on compilation by scissors-and-paste, had any serious effect on scholarly writing in China?
In my opinion, the effect has been both considerable and unfavorable. First of all, we have noted the burden on memory imposed by quotations and allusions. Second, we have also seen how quotations can become facile substitutes for genuine description, and throw doubt on the reality of what is being told.” [85]
• “[Chinese writing] deliberately omitted punctuations (also, Han characters do not have capitals); and it overemphasized aesthetic symmetry, poetic effects, and classical allusions…
Owing to its emphasis on aesthetic effects, archaic Chinese had a large baggage of literary idioms. For instance, we have hundreds of the rhythmic ‘four character phrases’…The use of archaic idiom, in addition to stereotyped syntactic and stylistic rules, poses a formidable barrier to expressing objects, processes, spatial configurations, and causal relations specifically, quantitatively, and rigorously.” [Qian 85:59]
4. • “The possibility of ambiguity in Literary Chinese could have been reduced and its reading considerably facilitated if punctuation had been sytematically employed… The fact that punctuation neverthless has had to wait until the twentieth century to become universal (as the result of Western influence) suggests that there existed a deeply rooted proprietary attitude toward the written language on the part of China’s literate minority…” [Bodde 91:91]
• On the lack of quotation marks, see the [Bodde 91:74-6] citation, above.
• On the lack of punctuation and capitalization, see the [Qian 85:59] citation, above.
5. • “We come now to the final topic, that of meaning: the fact that one and the same character can often embrace a considerable range of different meanings, many of them obviously semantically related, but others sometimes seemingly completely arbitrary. In view of the pictographic/ideographic origin of the characters, it is not surprising that their meanings should often begin with the physical and concrete and proceed from these through a series of increasingly metaphorical abstractions…
In sum, I believe that multiple meanings are probably more frequent and difficult to identify in Literary Chinese than in English or other European languages.” [Bodde 91:37-9]
; “[W]ords in Literary Chinese commonly bear multiple meanings. This phenomenon, I contend, can at worst throw the meaning of a passage into confusion, and even when this does not happen, places a continuing burden on the conscientious reader to explicate—sometimes laboriously—what he or she is reading… Apropus two highly ambiguous key terms in Mencius, Richards writes: ‘But these two uncertain words by no means account for all the ambiguity of the passage. In the West we are so accustomed to explicit sentence forms that we expect this kind of vagueness only at certain specific points in discourse—at words which are recognized to be indefinite in meaning. We are ready for a good deal of vagueness there. But a sentence shocks us whose whole structure has the same kind of indefiniteness. It appears to be a mystification on a much grander scale.'” [94]
6. • “I will not argue that Chinese or other Asian languages have no grammar or words… I am saying that, due to a weak concept of word and a diminished concern with the abstract way words fit together, East Asians feel less need to use the syntactic tools they do have to present their ideas in what literate Westerners would consider a clear and precise manner… Asian languages are difficult to understand and to translate not because of their structure or even the orthography, bad as that is. They are difficult because of the way Asians use them.
My main point…is that East Asians can present their ideas clearly and logically when they want to, but usually they do not want to. Asian writers, operating within a certain tradition, generally feel no obligation to write in a way that allows their readers to deduce meaning directly from a discourse. Instead, readers must impute meaning to a text whose units are poorly specified and whose structure is often ambiguous. Induction, not deduction; natural syllables, not abstract phonemes; morphemes, not objectified words, are the hallmarks of language use in East Asia. The same neglect of logic, abstraction, and analysis seen in other areas of East Asian culture is manifested here in the common elements of communication and thought.” [Hannas 03:112]
; “The lack of clearly defined words leads to ill-defined sentences, not only in classical texts, which are often nebulous and subject to varying interpretations, but even in modern scientific writing. Sentences run on interminably, much as in speech, with little thought given to segmenting ideas. The style is often vague, as if East Asian writers do not appreciate the need to present their work as an objectified, self-sustaining whole independent of personal context.” [216-7]
• “Another grammatical feature causing numerous difficulties is what Dobson (1959) calls “the rule of economy.” By this he means that although certain grammatical devices (notably the particles) do exist in Literary Chinese to indicate verb mood, noun number, nominalization of words, and the like, their use is by no means always mandatory and depends very much on the whim of the writer:
‘A lexic [a word] used as a verb may be invested environmentally [i.e., contextually] with mood, voice and aspect, but the verb may equally occur uncommitted, or neutral in any of these regards. Similarly, a lexic in nominal usage may be invested with number, or occur uncommitted to number. The language is not governed by rules which require the introduction of such indications as a matter of prescripted necessity.’
Much the same point has been expressed by Victor Purcell in language much less scholarly, more intemperate, but for that reason more arresting:
‘The rule is, if you can possibly omit, do so. The result may be that the meaning is quite hidden, but the reader is supposed not only to have an encyclopedic knowledge to assist him in his guesswork, but to have unlimited time for filling in ellipses. This does not mean that the language has no words to fill in the elipses, or that there are no words to convey tense, number, or mood. It merely means that the spirit of the language is against their use.'” [Bodde 91:34-5]
————
IV-5. Expository and scientific writing.
A. Whites axiomatized principles into degrees of abstraction, while Chinese made superficial correlations.
The greater inclination of Whites to conceive abstract principles of phenomena is evident in the expository writings of eminent scholars. This is evidence of greater creativity (section III-2).
Both Whites and Chinese recorded phenomena they observed, but only Whites went further and synthesized data into systems of principles ordered from more general to more particular, i.e. only Whites axiomatized natural and social laws [1]. This contrast is evident in the fields of grammar [2], of history [3], of philosophy and ethics [4], of law [5], of economics [6], of mathematics [7], of mechanics and physics [8], of astronomy [9], and of science in general [10]. Chinese philosophy is largely anecdotal, and Chinese history and science are mostly piecemeal compilations of individual ‘facts’. Chinese storytelling is similarly “loose, rambling, and episodic” [11]. While Whites analyzed data to resolve essential causes and properties, such as the underlying principles of mechanics; Chinese “correlated” data into arbitrary numerical schemes, such as five item categories (e.g. of animals, organs, or emotions) whose items supposedly correlate with their mystical Five Elements of Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water [12]. Use of such hazy correlations by the Chinese persisted into modern times [13], and a deficiency in analysis is observed in modern Chinese students [14].
1. • “I think we ought to be aware that mathematisation could not provide the true ‘magic touch’ [for the development of modern science], but ‘axiomatisation’ did. Galileo and Tartaglia both did mathematisation, but one did it in the realm of basic physical science, the other in the realm of technology. Science works on basic phenomena and arrives at conclusions which are universally valid but which may be remote from practical applications. That was the type of work that Galileo and Kepler accomplished. By way of axiomatisation, methodologically like Euclidian geometry, science tries to embrace as many facts as possible so that all are ordered in a unified explanatory system. Galileo and Kepler did their respective axiomatisations; Newton axiomatised both of them…
William Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of blood formed a part of the Scientific Revolution of Galileo’s time, yet it was not written in the language of mathematics. But the human intellect always tacitly accepts some fundamental assumption: explanation means accounting for a wide range of phenomena with a limited number of elements. The Yin and Yang, or the Five Elements, tried to work this way. They were the earliest instances of attempting axiomatization in China. Nevertheless, in the subsequent long centuries of Chinese history, we can seldom find the dimmest consciousness of scientific axiomatization. (In making this statement, the first specific case in my mind is again the non-acceptance of Euclidian Geometry.)” [Qian 85:65-6]
; “[W]e recognize that a systematic (such as taxonomical and calendrical) ordering of natural phenomena such as existed in traditional China was not adequate for the emergence of modern science, which demanded progressive levels of explanations that finally, in the form of Newtonian mechanics, led to an axiomatic and quantitative comprehension. Traditional China did have natural science on a phenomenological level; note Max Weber’s insight, ‘Chinese thought has remained rather stuck in the pictoral and descriptive’ and Needham’s observation that Chinese science has ‘always remained primarily empirical’. The founding of modern science in the West, however, was the result of pursuing mathematically logical explanations for observed phenomena.” [102]
• “It was perhaps a result in part of the non-generalizing nominalistic characteristic of Chinese thought which we have described, that the Chinese tradition was weak in the formation of objective laws. The esteem for the individual and the concrete, a lack of interest in universals, aborted the discovery of laws which order many particulars. This parallels the lack of strict laws for linguistic expression. Indifference to or lack of consciousness of the necessity for rules of language meant that the grammar was not developed.” [Nakamura 64:189]
; “The tendency to value and to devote attention to the particular rather than to the universal is observable in many different aspects of Chinese culture.” [196]
; “The Chinese had a high regard for particulars, and presented content concretely in accordance with their way of thinking; therefore they naturally came to be fond of complex multiplicity expressed in concrete form. Their standpoint, which relied upon and clung to sensory qualities, made them especially sensitive to the complex variety of phenomena instead of the laws and abstractly conceived unity of things. Diversity rather than similarity characterizes the realm of phenomena. Consequently, the Chinese, who depend upon perceived phenomena and value particulars, are naturally sensitive to the multiplicity of things, and rarely attempt to think about the universal validity of laws which regulate this multiplicity of things.” [217]
• “Even in those learned studies in which quotations and the other devices are not conspicuously present, Chinese scholarship has traditionally tended to concern itself more with details and specifics than with wholes and generalizations. The prevalence of this tendency is demonstrated by the very large number of scholars whose reputation rests primarily on their commentaries or other bit-by-bit studies on earlier texts or topics. The tendency reveals itself very clearly, as, for example, in the expository techniques of the classical philosophers, only two of whom—Mo Tzu and Hsun Tzu—really succeeded in getting away from the usual miscellany of casually juxtaposed utterances to produce chapter-length essays that are systematically developed, topically-centered, and add up to a manifestly coherent system of thinking. Nor does the situation greatly improve in postclassical philosophy, so that even in the case of such a giant as Chu Hsi (1130-1200), we have to derive his system from a bewildering assortment of recorded sayings, commentaries on the classics, letters to friends, and other scattered documents. There is no single Summa written by the master himself. The nearest approach is not an original work but an anthology—an anthology, moreover, containing nothing by Chu Hsi himself but only by his predecessors.” [Bodde 91:85-6]
; “Heavy reliance on lengthy quotations lifted en bloc from their original texts and inserted with only minimum discussion and analysis into their new settings exemplifies a conspicuous weakness found in a good deal of traditional Chinese scholarship: its frequent failure to synthesize, generalize, and hypothesize.” [92]
; “[M]y most trenchant criticism of Chinese literary devices and the techniques used for scholarly creation is that they have all served to turn Chinese scholarship away from substance and toward form, away from synthesis and generalization and toward compilation and commentary. Moreover…I strongly suspect that the nondefinition of terms, of which Richards complains in philosophy, is part of the same broader failure to analyze.” [96]
; “[My] second chapter’s discussion of language several times stresses a serious methodological weakness characterizing much traditional Chinese scholarship, namely, its all-too-common preoccupation with discrete events and details at the expense of overall synthesis, generalization, and analysis. The same preoccupation often appears in Chinese scientific writing. So too does the companion tendency of concentrating on pragmatic application at the expense of theory. One might expect this for the technologies, but such practicality is to be found also in the other categories enumerated above, including that even of the “pure” sciences. Han mathematicians, for example, unlike their Greek and Hellenistic opposites, showed little interest in explaining their techniques.” [361]
• “Chinese philosophy is not concerned with abstract disquisition into the nature of the universe. It does not seek general explanations for phenomena, nor does it try to order events behind a prime mover. Logic—depersonalized rules to express thought—is outside its tradition…
Portraying East Asia’s disinterest in logic and analysis as the flip side of an ethical focus devalued in the West, instead of explaining the absence of the former tradition in terms that make sense, is entirely too facile. It is time to acknowledge that the failure of East Asia to distinguish itself in analytical pursuits has little to do with any choice its thinkers made and everything to do with the fact that abstract thinking and analysis did not come easy to its intellectual elite.” [Hannas 03:104-5]
2. • “The esteem for the individual and the concrete, a lack of interest in universals, aborted the discovery of laws which order many particulars. This parallels the lack of strict laws for linguistic expression. Indifference to or lack of consciousness of the necessity for rules of language meant that the grammar was not developed. Unlike the Greeks and the Indians, the ancient Chinese produced no works on grammar or syntax, although they engaged in elaborate investigations and compilations of characters, phonetics, etymology, etc. Even though some Chinese pilgrim monks became acquainted with the Indian science of grammar, they did not attempt to establish a parallel science of Chinese grammar. The science of grammar was very important in the history of Indian philosophy, whereas a scientific grammar was developed in China only after the impact of Western civilization.” [Nakamura 64:189]
• “The difficulty East Asians have doing original science hence is just one dimension of a mindset that accords high value to concrete facts and scant attention to their abstract validity or the relationships between them. If this also sounds like a description of language use in East Asia, where words are ill-defined and connections between them are loosely specified, the similarity between them is not coincidental.” [Hannas 03:104]
3. • “As developed this way during the Sung dynasty, historical analogism permitted a greater degree of synthesis and abstraction than any of the other literary devices we have been discussing. In fact, as Hartwell demonstrates, it was occasionally possible for it to yield hypothetical propositions that are truly analytical. For the most part, nonetheless, it shared the tendency of the other devices to look more toward particulars than toward analysis, synthesis, and generalization. “Inference by analogy,” writes Hartwell, “…is useful in suggesting hypotheses, …but the formulation of such hypotheses and their arrangement in an explanatory system is an independent process. The Chinese never developed the habit of framing generalizations in a hypothetical-deductive form.” [Bodde 91:87]
; “Sung and post-Sung writers increasingly made use of a more extended biographical form, the nien p’u or “yearly register,” in which the facts of the subject’s life were recorded under year-by-year entries. This form permitted greater length and detail and became so popular that from early Sung down to the beginning of the twentieth century, some 1,934 nien p’u had been compiled by 1,208 persons, of whom more than 230 wrote autobiographically. This kind of biography, which continued to be produced in large numbers during the Republic, most nearly resembles the Western scholarly biography. Yet, it shares the weaknesses commonly found in other kinds of Chinese annalistic writing: ‘Like the annalistic historical style upon which it was modelled, the nien p’u is usually a succession of carefully dated discrete facts, with no attempt to connect them in any meaningful causal pattern; it makes no attempt to provide any explicit interpretation of its subject, and is best described as materials for a biography rather than biography itself.'” [288-9]
• “The Chinese lay stress especially on particular facts in the historical and social spheres, as the result of their emphasis on the concrete, including phenomena which are perfectly unique in time and space.
In the historical sphere, this trend may be observed in the objective and minute compilation of historical works. It is said that the ideal of the compilers of the Erh Shih Ssu Shih (Twenty-four Dynastic Histories up to the Manchu Dynasty) was as exhaustive an entry as possible of the incidents occurring in each dynasty. In the opinion of specialists this ideal is impossible to achieve, granted that Chinese historians were very succinct. But the fact of the existence of such a legendary ideal evidences their inclination to aim at portraying individual events in detail. Moreover, it is recognized that Chinese historians continually tried to enlarge and perfect their historical annals, and were always at work on supplements which would include materials omitted from the standard histories. Therefore, they think that the more complex the description is, the better the historical work is. Such a method of describing history is just the opposite of the method which aims at simple and concise description. Of course, we can also recognize the trend of summarization and simplification, but it was more usual to take the method of making the historical records more complex through the compilation of histories.” [Nakamura 64:199]
4. • “The tendency to value and to devote attention to the particular rather than to the universal is observable in many different aspects of Chinese culture.
The Five Classics, which are works of the highest authority regarded as providing the norms for human life, contain, for the most part, descriptions of particular incidents and statements of particular facts. They do not state general principles of human behavior. Even the Analects of Confucius records mostly the actions of individuals and the dicta of Confucius on separate incidents; these dicta for the most part have a personal significance. Through the classics and their commentaries the Chinese sought valid norms of moral conduct through individual instances. ” [Nakamura 64:196]
; “The way of thinking in which the Chinese prefer particular, concrete, and intuitive explanations may be seen in their way of explaining ideas and teaching people by the use of particular examples. To most Chinese, therefore, ethics is not understood or taught as part of a universal law, but is grasped on the basis of particular experiences, and is then utilized to realize human truth. Such a mental attitude is readily discernible in the Analects (Lun Yü), and especially in Zen Buddhism.” [198]
• See the [Bodde 91:85-6] citation, above; “The tendency reveals itself very clearly, as, for example, in the expository techniques of the classical philosophers…”.
5. • Chinese officials weren’t governed by formal laws; see section II-8.B and its sources.
• “The great Qing code listed 436 main statutes and about 1,900 supplementary or substatutes, which provided specific penalties for specific crimes. The magistrate’s problem was to find the statute most applicable to a given case. In doing so he might follow precedent or reason by analogy, but the law was not built up by cases, and although thousands of cases were collected and published with private commentaries to help the magistrates, there was rather little development of generalized doctrine and principles. The statutes were sometimes contradictory and their applicability uncertain. In general, the law was neither primary nor pervasive within the state.” [Fairbank 76:121]
• “According to Needham, since the transition from the Scool of Legalists to Confucianism at the very beginning of traditional China, ‘during the period of transition from feudalism to bureaucratism. . . .the Chinese early acquired a great distaste for precisely formulated abstracted codified law’.” [Qian 85:115]
• “As Lin lamented, ‘The most striking charactersistic in our [Chinese] political life as a nation is the absense of a constitution and of the idea of civil rights.’ Instead of rule by law, there was a long tradition of rule by magistrates judgment.” [Bond 91:58]
• “The absence of a formal ‘rule of law’ and of institutionalized countervailing powers that could see to its proper functioning, moreover, made the Qing administration vulnerable to ‘bad’ officials from the bottom to the very top.” [Vries 15:275]
• “The decisions of the [Chinese] magistrates were not legal ‘adjudication’ as in the Western legal order. They invoked general ethical, social or legal norms as their legal basis without the citation of legal codes or customs, formal or informal. These rulings, in accordance with the intermediation nature, required the written consent of the litigants. The administrative and ‘intermediation’ nature of the legal system on civil matters is consistent with the absence of a formal civil and commercial code and a missing professional legal class.” [Gupta 10:15]
6. • See the [Bodde 91:86-8] citation, below; “Hartwell’s further remarks, though directed particularly to the study of economics…”.
7. • “Nevertheless, in the subsequent long centuries of Chinese history, we can seldom find the dimmest consciousness of scientific axiomatization. (In making this statement, the first specific case in my mind is again the non-acceptance of Euclidian Geometry.)…
“I agree with Mikami and Fu Si-nian that the great deficiency in old Chinese mathematical thought was the absence of rigorous proof, in particular the absence of a system of deductive geometry. This configuration correlates with the lack of formal logic and the dominance of associative (organicist) thought. From our Sino-European comparison, it is clear that the deficiency was not just in mathematics; it hindered the development of modern science as a whole. In other fields of science, the Chinese way of thinking generally lacked accuracy in defining, exactness in formulating, rigour in proving, and logic in explaining.” [Qian 85:65-7]
; See also the [Qian 85:47] citation, below.
• See the [Bodde 91:361] citation, above; “…Han mathematicians, for example, unlike their Greek and Hellenistic opposites, showed little interest in explaining their techniques.”
; “Chinese mathematics, too, remained handicapped then and later by its failure to adopt mathematical symbols, in place of which its formulas were written with ordinary Chinese characters.” [363]
8. • On the axiomatisation of physical sciences by Whites and not Chinese, see the [Qian 85:65-6] and [102] citations, above.
; “There had already been some vital scientific seeds in Hellenic civilization. Thumbing through the books of Euclid, Archimedes, Apollonius, an other ancient mathematicians – rendered into modern notation – one cannot help but being struck by their scientific modernity and unvarnished professionalism. Yet when we try hard to make sense of the propositions on mechanics and geometrical optics in the roughly contemporaneous Mohist Canons, we find ourselves more often than not in a hopeless quandry.” [47; see 40-59]
• “The Chinese failed to develop physics and mechanics, or the laws of motion. “Without those theoretical foundations, it is difficult to see how one could arrive at Kepler’s laws of celestial physics, much less Newton’s synthesis, building on the new, seventeenth century science of mechanics, along with Galileo’s idea of inertia.” [Huff 11:113-4]
• “One important illustration of the gap between Chinese and Western science is in knowledge about electricity. Although Needham contended that the Chinese knowledge of magnetism put China close to the West in early knowledge of electricity, his critics argue otherwise. Knowledge of magnetism is in six parts: (1) attraction, (2) direction, (3) declination (a compass needle does not always point to true north) (4) local variation (the direction in which the needle points varies due to local disturbing forces), (5) inclination (the needle does not always point in a horizontal plane) and (6) the earth is a giant loadstone, which attracts the compass needle. The Chinese and the Greeks discovered the first two at more or less the same time. The Chinese discovered the third well before it was discovered in the West. It seems that the Chinese also knew the fourth. However, the fifth and the sixth parts were unknown to them. Yet the sixth is what turns magnetism from a wholly empirical body of knowledge into a theoretical science where the earth-is-a-loadstone hypothesis explains other observations. This is what Gilbert (1540-1603) did for the West in his famous treatise De Mangnete. So when European scholars made the study of magnetism into a science in the late 16th century, the Chinese study of magnetism “…did not surpass a qualitative description of magnetic declination” (Qian: 80).” [Bekar 02:19-20]
9. • See the [Qian 85:65-6] citation, above, on the astronomical axiomatisation of Galileo, Kepler, and Newton.
; “Needham describes astronomy in traditional China as an orthodox, official, and Confucian science, which was characterized by its early recording of sun-spots, ‘new-stars’, comets, and meteors. Like calendrical revisions, these activities were part and parcel of bureaucratic necessity. As I have mentioned before, calendrical regulation was required to govern a vast, agrarian state… For 3,000 years, Chinese astronomy remained empirical and observational. Earlier we mentioned that Aristotle’s mistaken ‘law of falling bodies’ was scientific. Analogously, we may say that Ptolemaic planetary astronomy was scientific, in the sense that the solar system itself was correctly isolated and an orbital explanation was attempted—it was an early combination of mathematisation and axiomatisation. Thanks to this common scientific ground, Ptolemy’s Almagest was replaced by Copernicus’ De revolutionibus, just as Aristotle’s ‘law of falling bodies’ was replaced by that of Galileo’s—although the latter was a case of much smaller scale and subject to direct test. We have already outlined the development of mechanics, and examined Chinese mechanical under-development. It seems a similar situation existed in Chinese planetary (or explanatory) astronomy. There was only a half step, or even less: ‘In spite of so much accurate observation, Chinese study of planetary motion remained purely non-representational in character.'” [68-9]
; “[Chinese] astronomy had a long and continuous tradition of taking notes of ‘yi-xiang (abnormality)’, but remained empiricist for 3,000 years.” [81-2]
10. • “[T]he memory of a Chinese for a face, or for anything written, is uncanny if his attention has ever been directed to it once. Chinese books on natural history, medicine, astronomy and the like reveal attentive regard for details observed but amazingly poor reasoning in efforts to establish conclusions from these details. They learn well the habits of animals, the recurrent positions of stars, the differential diagnoses of disease and many other things in the world of natural phenomena, but fall down hopelessly in their failure to deduce from any of their data constructive inferences in any systematic order.” [Townsend 33:115]
• “In what today would be called scientific writings, the approach again tends to be piecemeal, even in works not consisting primarily of earlier quotations. This is true of Shen Kua (1030-1094), for example, probably the greatest of the scientifically minded Sung writers. His best-known work, the Meng-ch’i pi-t’an (Dream Torrent Jottings), consists of 507 separate comments or essays, almost none longer than a few hundred words, grouped very loosely under sixteen general topics such as “Ancient Matters,” “Human Affairs,” “Government,” “implements,” “The Supernatural”, and so on. Other than this, they seem to have no overall interrelation, being simply the diverse observations of an exceptionally intelligent and wide-ranging mind.
So too with respect to the equally famous Ku Yen-wu (1613-1682), leader of the new school of textual criticism at the beginning of the Ch’ing dynasty. His Jih-chih lu (Daily Additions to Knowledge) consists of somewhat over 1,000 carefully formulated scholarly notes, usually fairly short and grouped under five humanistic topics such as the classics, government and economics, ethics and social relations, and so on. Less than a century separated their publication in definitive form (1695) from the appearance of William Gilbert’s book, On the Magnet (1600). Neither before nor after 1600 did any Chinese write an entire book, or even an extended essay, on that subject, despite the fact that magnetism (and later the compass) had been known and alluded to by a long line of Chinese savants from the third century BC onward, including notably Shen Kua himself…
The Chinese never developed the habit of framing generalizations in a hypothetical-deductive form.
Hartwell’s further remarks, though directed particularly to the study of economics in pre-modern China, are broadly applicable to pre-modern Chinese scientific studies generally:
‘The Chinese normally did not distinguish differences between the relative worth of alternative modes of logical presentation. The modern student of Chinese economic thought is constantly amazed to find in the same document equal treatment given to statements of widely varying orders of abstraction and analytical significance. . . .The failure to distinguish different orders of conceptualization severely limit the possibilities for integrating the separate ideas of economic doctrine into an explanatory system and precluded the broadening of abstraction essential to the progress of a science. This was partly owing to the habitual use of the historical-analogical method, which does not naturally lend itself to suggesting subtle differences in levels of generalization–for example, once the analogy was discovered, the problem was often deemed solved. The failure was primarily a result of neglecting to search consciously for general hypotheses.’
Undoubtedly there are many factors, environmental and socioinstitutional as well as intellectual, that may help explain why China, despite so many scientific and technological “firsts”, did not go on to develop an evolving science, one based on experimentation combined with observation rather than on uncritically accepted traditional theory. But on the intellectual side, the failure to synthesize, generalize, and hypothesize certainly lies near the heart of the problem. How much all this should properly be attributed to linguistic as against nonlinguistic factors is a subject on which scholars differ.” [Bodde 91:86-8]
; Bodde reviews the evidence of traces of the concept of laws of nature in Chinese literature in [Bodde 91:328-44] and concludes: “Does the new evidence invalidate Needham’s earlier conclusion that the concept of “laws of nature” was alien to Chinese philosophical thinking? I believe not, as far as the overwhelming bulk of Chinese philosophical writing is concerned… [I]t would, indeed, be strange if within an intellectual tradition as rich and varied as that of China, no trace whatever should ever have appeared of a concept that in the European environment was to prove so persistent and significant.
Not surprisingly, the embryonic beginning of “laws of nature” are particularly apparent among those relatively early thinkers—Mo Tzu, the Han Confucian Tung Chung-shu, alchemists such as Ko Hung—who thought in strongly theistic or animistic terms. On the popular level it is probable that such ideas long remained widespread. Remarkably, however, they failed to gain more than a temporary and minority position in the mainstream of Chinese philosophical speculation. Although traces of “laws of nature” may occur in philosophical writings after the time of Ko Hung [283-343 AD], I have failed to come across them.” [344]
• See the [Qian 85:67] citation, above; “From our Sino-European comparison, it is clear…”.
11. • “The story-telling tradition had a powerful influence on the novel. Chapters end with a form of words appropriate to the conclusion of a story-telling session, and the style is loose, rambling, and episodic, as if the author is prepared to go on and on as long as he can keep an audience.” [Dawson 78:245]
12. • “Central to this chapter are Chinese attempts to classify the objects, phenomena, and concepts of the natural and human worlds according to correlative thinking. This means grouping those items regarded as interrelated into sets of items that are the same in number and thus fall under the same numerical category. Mayers…has listed eighteen such categories, ranging numerically from 2 to 100 and containing 317 separate sets of items. The five largest categories are those of 9 (containing 31 sets), 6 (38 sets), 4 (40 sets), 5 (63 sets), and 3 (68 sets).
Although many sets are grouped together only on the basis of sameness of number, many others are additionally felt to belong to special systems of relationships. Examples of the latter are the Five Planets and Five Viscera, both members of the system of Five Elements. By contrast, the Five Cardinal Relationships Among Mankind and Five Curved Portions of the Body have nothing to do with one another save that they both number five.
In addition to the general Chinese world of numerical categories there exists a separate world of categories pertaining to Chinese Buddhism–most of them already formulated before Buddhism came to China and only a minority added within China after that event. [They are very numerous.]” [Bodde 91:97]
; “Such [skepticism about correlations and replacement with natural laws] at least is what eventually happened to medieval and postmedieval cosmological thinking in Europe. There, beginning around 1600, the old correlative kind of cosmology, believed in even by Kepler, collapsed under the rising tide of the “discovery of how to discover.” Out of the debris a new worldview gradually emerged, much more based on causality than correlation…
In China, no such triumph of causality over correlation occurred for a long time. Until the present century, as we shall see, the old correlative cosmology remained dominant. This very important difference between Europe and China (as well as other civilizations) should be kept in mind as we read further.
Let us turn now to the correlative systems of pre-modern China. The most important Chinese numerical categories have been those in twos, threes, fives, and nines. Basic to everything has been the polarity of the yang and yin principles, each with its many correlative qualities. For the yang, these include brightness, heat, dryness, hardness, activity, incipience, dispersion, masculinity, Heaven, Sun, south, above, roundness, odd numbers, and much else. For the yin they include darkness, cold, wetness, softness, quiesence, completion, consolidation, femininity, Earth, moon, north, below, squareness, even numbers, and much else.
It is important to differentiate this kind of polarity from the Zorastrian/Manichean struggles of light against darkness and good against evil. In Chinese thinking, the yin and yang complement rather than struggle against one another. Each is essential for the functioning of the cosmos, even though, as we shall see, the yin is hierarchically subordinate to the yang. In the repetitive cycles of seasons, days, and other phenomena, the yin and yang ever wax and wane in inverse ratio to one another, without the one ever permanently suppressing the other…
Also of major cosmological importance are the five entities of wood, fire, soil, metal, and water. Initially they were apparently conceived merely as the substance bearing these names, but in the course of time they gradually evolved into immaterial, all-embracing cosmic forces. This change in thinking is reflected in their changing names [eventually becoming] the “Five Elements” [or Forces/Phases].” [99-101]
; “How pervasive was the way of thinking that compartmentalized space and time and attached them, with things and ideas of all kinds, to numerical categories? “All pervasive” would seem to be the reply, judging from the fact that practically no Chinese thinker—unless perhaps he was a Buddhist monk or, much later, a Ming-Ch’ing scholar of “evidential research”— explicitly challenged the validity of the major cosmological and numerical systems from the Han dynasty until the present century. Even so, as we have seen, “evidentialist” criticisms tended to be particular rather than general.
But perhaps this is not the right question, and what should really be asked is how much of this sort of thinking permeated the minds not just of philosophically inclined men, but of all those others who were engaged in what today would be called science, proto-science, and technology. It can hardly be doubted that the influence was profound in fields like biology and biological technology, alchemy and chemistry, physics, meteorology, and the earth sciences…” [121-2]
; See also the [Bodde 91:321-4] citation in the next section.
• “A typical example of it can be seen in the theory of five natural elements. They did not investigate the essential character of each thing, but combined all things together by looking for similarities in their external appearances; namely, each one of five directions, five sounds, five forms, five tastes, five internal organs, and many other things divisible into five classes, was assigned to one of the five natural elements, each thing deriving its nature from its respective natural elements. On the basis of this theory, a new doctrine was constructed, explaining the change of dynasties. This theory says that each dynasty possessed one of the natures of the five natural elements, such as wood-nature or fire-nature; therefore, a change in dynasty conformed with a change in the order of the natural elements. When a dynasty would not fit satisfactorily into this system, the sequence of the lineage of dynasties of the past periods was even reversed.
In the acceptance of Buddhism, the same kind of logic appeared. Yen Chih-t’ui (6th century) of the Northern Ch’i dynasty declared that the five precepts taught in Buddhism are the same as the five infallible instructions taught in Confucianism. And he matched each one of the five precepts to the five Confucian instructions. A similar interpretation was also adopted by the Chinese Buddhist monks. For example, Tsung-mi said that the objectives of the five precepts and the five instructions were the same although their ways of being practised were different. He also identified each of the five Buddhist precepts with each of the five Confucian rules even though this identification was not correct. Furthermore, Chih-i matched each one of the five precepts of Buddhism to each one of the five invariables, the five classics, and the five natural elements of Confucianism respectively.” [Nakamura 64:230]
13. • See the [Bodde 91:121-2] citation, above; and the [Bodde 91:321-4] citation in the next section.
; “[T]he Five Elements… achieved philosophical respectability through inclusion within the pages of the important eclectic work Lu-shih ch’un-ch’iu (Mr. Lu’s Springs and Autumns), compiled in 240 BC. There the elements are systematically correlated with the months and seasons of the year, and the ideal ruler is instructed to perform ceremonies, wear clothing, eat foods, and do much else throughout the year in a manner deemed appropriate to each season. In this way he can ensure continuing harmony between man and nature and prevent such unseasonable phenomena as cold and hail in summer or the flowering of plants and trees in Autumn… From this time onward, the Five Elements and yin-yang ideas gained general currency in all schools of thought, and the Han thinker Tung-Chung-shu (ca. 179-104 BC), in his Ch’un-ch’iu fan-lu (Luxuriant Spring and Autumn Dew), integrated them with Confucian moral and social values into a single, all-embracing system.
Following the collapse of the Han dynasty in 220 AD, the Five Elements gradually lost much of their political significance. In cosmological thinking, however, as well as in such scientific or proto-scientific fields as medicine, biology, alchemy, and geomancy, the Five Elements, together with the yin-yang system, retained their prominence until recent times. This conclusion remains valid despite the growing influx of Western ideas from the Jesuits onward and the simultaneous indigenous rise of the new critical school of scholarship [School of Evidential Research of the late Ming and early Ch’ing dynasties (~1600-1800)]…” [102-3]
; “From [Han times] until the present century, apparently almost nobody ever argued against particularized concepts of time and space or the actuality of the Five Elements.” [105-6]
14. • “[Chinese students] are especially weak at the development of persuasive arguments in new situations…
[A]t higher levels of education, and in some disciplines especially, what becomes important is the illumination of inner, hidden patterns and meaning. Instead of description, what one needs is induction. One must go beyond ‘surface’ levels in approaching learning, to ‘deep’ levels. So-called ‘surface levels of learning’ emphasize mastery of facts through rote learning; ‘deep approaches to learning’, a penetration beneath the surface to discover broad themes, underlying assumptions, directions of the argument, and so forth. Not surprisingly, Western teachers of Chinese students at university find their charges weak at general essay questions. Such questions require students to identify a pattern, select facts to support that pattern, and to organize facts and themes in a persuasive way. Instead, they often produce a paper with an avalanche of facts which fit the general topic, but lack any sense of development and conclusion. The exasperated teachers either switch to multiple-choice questions or begin training their students in (Western style) argumentation!” [Bond 91:30-1]
————
B. Whites scrutinize and debate principles and assertions more robustly than do Chinese.
Chinese also do not scrutinize, test, argue, nor explain supposed principles and claims of jurisprudence, ethics, science, etc. nearly as much as do Whites. This evinces that Whites both conceive and incorporate principles more robustly, an indication of greater creativity (section III-2.D-F).
The Chinese never developed procedures for testing and debating propositions, i.e. the scientific method, as did Whites [1]. Formal debate has always been rare in China, hardly existing even in judicial proceedings [2]. The claims of China’s venerable sages are accepted without question [3], and unquestioning acceptance of authoritative assertion continues today toward the gurus of Communism [4]. China’s civil service examinations were based on rote memory of Confucian literary classics [5]. What few arguments are made in Chinese philosophy tend to be based on loose, superficial analogies, e.g. ‘man’s nature is indifferent to good and evil just as water is indifferent to the direction it may flow’ [6]. The Chinese showed little interest in logic [7], or the proofs of Euclidean geometry [8]. The essays of modern Chinese students are likewise found to be deficient in orderly argument and explanation [9]. Relatedly, Chinese students are weaker at discrimination and expression of uncertainty [10]. It is no surprise that Chinese are underrepresented as lawyers and other creative speaking professions [11].
1. • “Thus Roger Bacon at Oxford in the thirteenth century: “All categories depend on a knowledge of quantity, concerning which mathematics treats, and therefore the whole power of logic depends on mathematics.” This marriage of observation and precise description, in turn, made possible replication and verification. Nothing so effectively undermined authority. It mattered little who said what, but what was said; not perception but reality. Do I see what you say you saw?…
As David Gans, an early seventeenth-century popularizer of natural science, put it, one knows that magic and divining are not science because their practitioners do not argue with one another. Without controversy, no serious pursuit of knowledge and truth.
This powerful combination of perception with measurement, verification, and mathematized deduction—this new method—was the key to knowing. Its practical successes were the assurance that it would be protected and encouraged whatever the consequences. Nothing like it developed anywhere else.” [Landes 98:203]
• “The Chinese never completed the scientific project. They brought a consistently pragmatic curiosity to their inquiries and achieved extraordinary insight in individual cases, but they never developed the framework that would enable the accumulation of scientific knowledge. The real thing: The advent of the scientific method in post-medieval Europe… a fundamental change occurred in post-medieval Europe in the way human beings went about accumulating and verifying knowledge. The common-sense understanding of the phrase scientific method labels the aggregate of those changes. I use the phrase to embrace the concepts of hypothesis, falsification, and parsimony; the techniques of the experimental method; the application of mathematics to natural phenomena; and a system of intellectual copyright and dissemination.” [Murray 03:237]
• “In order to illustrate some ‘critical questions’ [regarding traditional Chinese medicine] Joravsky used the case of ‘tadpole contraceptive’: “That rude defeat of belief by collision with physical reality raises critical questions. . .Was there some dreamy quality in the traditional Chinese mentality that permitted a persistent belief in a contraceptive method which could so easily be proved ineffective?…”
Have we not seen clearly this ‘dreamy quality in the traditional Chinese mentality’ in the recognition of facts and principles of buoyancy? The situations are not exactly the same, because in the mechanical context some ideas were correct (such as Cao’s weighing the elephant), some partly correct (such as testing the specific gravity of brine with lotus seeds). But, in the case of correct knowledge, no one bothered to generalise it; in the case of incorrect understanding and inaccurate practice no one tested, criticized, and improved it.” [Qian 85:57]
; “[O]wing to the absence of an academic atmosphere activated by criticism and counter-criticism [in 16th century China], and the presence of the ‘dreamy mentality’ that permitted the persistence of disprovable hearsay, no one would [treat a given medical claim as a working hyposthesis]…
Owing to the lack of competition in creative thinking, criticism on the basis of objectivity, tests in terms of empiricism, and checks by logical reasoning, traditional Chinese science generally stayed at an archaic or underdeveloped status. A distant and vague analogy would be accepted as a piece of convincing evidence. In so far as explanatory scholarship is concerned, traditional Chinese science could boast little.” [68]
• “The [Chinese] literati who, if you’ll pardon my saying it, were literate and ‘whose educational attainments might have made possible more substantial forms of theoretical conceptualization, did not build models, establish hypotheses, or conduct experiments in a systematic fashion. They did not develop the mental ethos associated with scientific investigation—such as skepticism, innovation, and inquiry into the unknown, processes associated with scientific and technological development.'” [Hannas 03:99-100]
• “Needham (1981) argued that China never developed “the fundamental bases of modern science, such as the application of mathematical hypotheses to Nature, the full understanding and use of the experimental method and the systematic accumulation of openly published scientific data.” Lin (1995) made essentially the same point. China, in spite of its early sophistication, fell behind the West because it “did not make the shift from experience-based to experiment cum science-based innovation, while Europe did so through the scientific revolution in the seventeenth century.” [Maddison 05:62]
2. • “The lack of the controversial spirit of dialogue in ancient China is noteworthy, although it is still problematic whether dialectic is necessary to philosophy. The dialectic—the art of questioning and answering as a device for philosophical analysis—did not develop as it had in Greece. Western sinologues often assert that the dialectic is present in the rules of discourse given by Mo-tzu, but we have too little data on the application of these rules to establish the existence of a true dialectic.
In India it was long a custom for the assertor and the objector to argue with each other in a public assembly sponsored by a great personage. In China this practice of public debate was relatively rare. It occurred for a short period in the sixth and seventh centuries. Likewise, Chinese court-procedure was not characterized by the development of judicial dialogue between the accused and the accuser. The reason is that the Chinese judge was not an arbitrator between two groups, but an official who took evidence from both sides, then sent out his own underlings to examine the truth of the statements made by both sides. That is to say, Chinese court-procedure was not the same as that in the West. The almost total absence of this type of phenomenon in Chinese society meant that a great deal of Indian logic, which in origin was a logic of dialogue, had no significance for the Chinese.” [Nakamura 64:188-9]
• “The [Chinese] magistrate heard all cases within his area, both civil and criminal. There were no juries to give their verdict or advocates to present the cases for and against the accused. The magistrate consucted the hearing alone and alone made his decision. Prior to the hearing he would have investigated the case himself, and so he combined the roles of detective, police chief, prosecutor, judge, and jury.” [Dawson 78:45]
• “The fact that Confucians and others so often reacted negatively to the new ideas points to a signal difference between ancient China and ancient Greece. A formalistic indication is the virtual absence in ancient Chinese philosophy of anything resembling the Socratic dialogue (meaning a reasoned discourse between two individuals pursued in order to approach closer to clarity and truth; I doubt that the Chinese debates alluded to by Kroll–of whose details we know exceedingly little–were conducted in this manner). Dialogues, when they occur, are rarely more than three or four interchanges long and usually consist of respectful questions (not probing objections) addressed by the disciple to the master in order to facilitate his exposition. In the rare cases in which sharp debate between the master and an outsider—perhaps the most famous is that between Mencius and Kao Tzu on human nature—the outcome is predetermined in the sense that after a very few exchanges, the master always has the last triumphant word while his opponent is reduced to silence.” [Bodde 91:179]
• “Science advances by critical inheritance, that is through debates. The lack of debate was in fact a part of the lack of professional inheritance in scientific matters. More generally, as I have mentioned before, the situation reflects the lack of intellectual activation and creativity. The whole book of Wang Chong’s Lun Heng (AD 83) is imbued with polemics, which makes it unique in early Chinese science.” [Qian 85:71]
3. • “The Chinese very often stress precedents, not abstract principles; whence their abundant historical allusions and set literary phrases. A people stressing particulars and concrete perception is inclined to set a basis of law in past customs and recurrent events, i.e. in previous examples as precedents. In other words, the fruit of the past experiences of people of older times arouses in the Chinese mind a sense of validity…
Most Chinese think it better to imitate in their writing the ways of expression used by their predecessors rather than to contrive new styles by their own efforts. Ability in writing was always closely tied to a knowledge of the classics. Therefore, classical Chinese texts consisted of a series of phrases or idioms generally taken from old texts; the foremost of these texts are the classics called the “ching.”…
As long as the Chinese practiced the way of thinking described above, it is quite natural that they should have regarded the writings of their predecessors as having unquestionable authority. The thought and life of the Chinese people must always be examined in relation to the Chinese classics, for the life of the Chinese has been strongly conditioned by the classics. Since ancient times in China, the books which set the pattern of life have been fixed. They are called… Thus, the Five Classics were established as a pattern for the life of the Chinese people. It offered the precedents par excellence, ruling over all other precedents, so that in time the work came to be considered truth itself and perfection. It was thought that no matter how much human life might change, all the truth vital to human life was to be sought in these Five Classics.” [Nakamura 64:204-6]
; “Chinese Buddhists, especially the priests, took over the doctrine founded and taught by Sakyamuni, and considered it their duty to exalt their interpretation of his teaching, in spite of the fact that Chinese Buddhism differs from Indian Buddhism in many respects. Therefore, they rewrote arbitrarily even the sentences of the sutra; for instance…” [209]
; “The custom of attaching importance to past events led the Chinese to a way of thinking that assumes a master is generally superior to his disciples… This attitude of respect for the transmission of the master’s teaching to his disciples led the Chinese Buddhists to be strict in studying the genealogy of the doctrines transmitted from a master to his disciples.” [210]
; See also the [211-2] citation below, on China’s rejection of Indian logical scrutiny in favor of the authority of traditional sacred books.
• “Neo-Confucian belief in the sanctity of a Tao transmitted from antiquity reinforced a tendency often found in Chinese thought, that of looking to the past as precedent for the present… Instead of approaching the past analytically, they felt obliged to reconcile their new thinking with what had already been said and thought in the classics…
Throughout its history, Confucianism has deprecated debate as a means of advancing knowledge. So glorious is the Tao, the Confucians would say, that its validity should be self-evident without the need for argument. If, nonetheless, it has today become obscured by a welter of controversy, this is simply sad evidence of the degenerate world in which we live. This viewpoint, as we shall see shortly, was widespread among other classical schools as well, even though the Tao for them might be quite different from the Confucian Tao…” [Bodde 91:178]
; “That the Confucians were by no means alone in their yearning for intellectual oneness becomes evident when we read the very similar remarks by the anonymous Taoist whose critique of the late Chou philosphers occupies the final chapter of the Chuang-tzu:…
The word pien, “argument or disputation”, was used pejoratively not only by Confucians but by Taoists, as for example in the Chuang-tzu, where members of the School of Names (the Logicians) are more than once referred to disparagingly as pien-che, “arguers.” The criticism directed against “the arguers” by a variety of thinkers are all remarkably similar in tone. They accuse them, among other things, of “confusing and deceiving the ignorant masses”, “causing subtle divisions and disorder”, “throwing a deceiving glamor over men’s minds”, and “specializing in the definition of names but losing sight of human feelings.”
One would naturally expect the Legalists to insist on total conformity to a narrowly defined state orthodoxy, but Mo Tzu too maintained that “what the superior approves, all must approve. What the superior condemns, all must condemn.” [181-2]
• “The sage was envisaged not only as bringer of harmony and tranquility to the world through benevolent government, but also as a supreme teacher. As Mencius said, ‘A sage is the teacher of a hundred generations.’ Teaching in this context was not a matter of presenting intellectual insights into the nature of the world, but rather of providing models for conduct so that people may conform with the pattern of the world…
This explains Confucius’s famous claim to be a ‘transmitter, not a creator.’ In regarding themselves as guardians and transmitters of the old tradition the Confucians were not merely conserving a literary and cultural heritage for its aesthetic or antiquarian appeal; they were handing on a tradition about the model behavior of the exemplars of antiquity…
The importance of this concern with the emulation of models, already a prominent feature of early Chinese writing, has had a profound influence on Chinese literature and thought down to the present day…” [Dawson 78:79]
• “Late Imperial China witnessed not a philological revolution but the ‘rise of Classicism, ritualism, and purism’. The so-called ‘evidential’ (kaocheng) movement was a response to the threatened position of the Chinese gentry, an effort to restore an elite culture which had been considerably weakened by Ming commercialization… The vision of this movement was conservative, recovery of the ‘original’ or ‘pure’ Confucian norms and language. They were dedicated to philological precision in their efforts to achieve or recover the pure classical traditions.” [Duchesne 11b]
• More on the strong tendency of Chinese writers to imitate/copy past sages in section IV-2.A and its sources.
4. • “People who knew China well before the Second World War would often remark that when Chinese were discussing a problem with each other, if one of them would quote a passage of the classics, the others would at once express their approval. Since China’s turn to Communism, Marx, Lenin, and Mao Tse-tung have replaced the Chinese classics. Although this is a great change, we can see how deeply the way of thinking of the nation is rooted in its yielding to propaganda with little if any resistance, so long as an authority is cited from the new Communist leaders.” [Nakamura 64:208]
• “But although the Confucian label on the package has been discarded, some of the essential ingredients remain… In presenting Communism to the Chinese people ideological writers of the 1930s and 1940s not only used the familiar language of proverbial phrases and classical quotations to give this alien philosophy a homely look, but also assimilated Communist ideas to familiar philosophical themes from the native tradition… In his essay How to be a Good Communist Liu Shao-ch’i even went so far as to argue that the problem of ‘goodness’ was so similar in Communism and Confucianism that concepts from the latter might be used to elucidate the former. Moreover, the traditional acceptance of a strict orthodoxy based on the Confucian Classics had its counterpart under the People’s Republic when the sayings and writings of a great, latter-day sage, Chairman Mao, were adopted as a standard of correctness. The old-style mandarins who knew the Classics by heart have their modern equivalent in the cadres who are expert in the current orthodoxy. Very traditional, too, is the emphasis on political correctness to the detriment of technical expertise…” [Dawson 78:288]
5. • “[The imperial civil service examination’s] content was non-scientific and non-analytical, stressing Confucian classics, poetry and official histories. A great mass of such works had to be committed to memory and reproduced in the examinations.” [Bekar 02:21]
• “The subject matter of the examinations was the Confucian classics, poetry, and official histories. From an early age, young boys were taught to memorize the Confucian classics:… Initially, young pupils learned these works without knowing the meaning of what they were memorizing… The examinations largely asked students to recite passages from the classics, to comment on selections from them, or, at more advanced levels, to write about the appropriate conduct for the wise and virtuous ruler. The so-called eight-legged essay, which emerged in early Ming times, was a composition based on a quotation from the classics that was to be presented in rigid, stylized form.” [Huff 11:160]
• “During the last five centuries of its life the [Chinese Examinations] system failed to preserve the freshness and ingenuity of earlier days. Throughout the Ming and Ch’ing periods the commentaries of Chu Hsi remained the standard interpretation of the Classics and candidates were expected to make their answers conform to this orthodoxy. They also had to write their papers in the form of the notorious eight-legged essay. This type of essay, subject to rigorous rules, required technical expertise rather than intellectual distinction for its composition, so it has been a byword in modern times for the sterilty and formalism of the classic tradition.” [Dawson 78:34]
; “The chief requirement for success in the examinations, apart from the technical mastery of the ‘eight-legged essay’ format, was a thorough knowledge of the Confucian Classics and the historical literature, and a mastery of several poetic styles. The more practical content of the examinations varied, but was much less important in the Ch’ing than it had been in the T’and and Sung, when the study of law had been also required.” [37]
; “For those [Chinese boys] who received schooling, whether from private tutors or in schools sponsored by local officials, [etc.], the education was heavily biased toward the Classics, and there was much emphasis on rote-learning and little concern for whether the books were understood.” [149-50]
• “[Mandarians] were not trained in law, but were appointed according to their proficiency in the classics – which amounted to a vast lore of mixed poetry, proverbs, analects and chronicles, much on the order of the Christian Old Testament or the Jewish Talmud. China was in advance of Western countries in requiring civil service examinations with competitive ratings for public positions. Had not the subject of study been so limited with opposition to all additions of a constructive kind, this system might have worked very well. As it was, the system was about like requiring a man to memorize Chaucer, the Song of Songs, Genesis, and a few other equally archaic things, in order to fit him for the duties of an architect, a judge, a civil engineer and a moralist, all of which the ideal mandarin was supposed to be – and naturally was not.” [Townsend 33:111]
6. • “Besides the various literary devices we have been discussing, one persistently used in Chinese argument is analogy: A is asserted to possess certain qualities because it allegedly resembles B, which does possess those qualities. This form of argument goes back early. One remembers, for example, the debate in the Meng-tzu on human nature, in which Kao Tzu argues that man’s nature is indifferent to good and evil just as water is indifferent to the direction it may take depending on whether a channel is opened for it to the east or the west– to which Mencius replies that human nature on the contrary has a universal tendency toward goodness just as water has a universal tencency to flow downward. The uncertainty, logically speaking, of this kind of analogical argument is sufficiently evident from this example. Here it need merely be further remarked that the classification of things into analogical pairs, as demanded by the use of analogy, would seem, like the use of quotation and similar devices already considered, to encourage a tendency to look at phenomena in terms of set symbols rather than realities.” [Bodde 91:81-2]
; “Not only did such analogical parallelism continue as an important factor in later Chinese prose and poetry. It also marked the start of the macrocosmic/microcosmic kind of thinking that thereafter was to crop up repeatedly in Chinese intellectual history… Table 4 shows some of the analogies between “Man” and “Heaven” drawn by Tung Chung-shu in his Ch’un-ch’iu fan-lu.
[Table 4 shows such correlations as human joints to months of the year, limbs to the seasons, orifices and veins to valleys and rivers, breathing to wind, and rulers’ benevolence and punishment to Spring’s warmth and Autumn’s coolness.]…
The same sort of analogizing, sometimes from the human world to nature and sometimes the other way, continued through the ages. Ko Hung argues that just as people are unable to know why their bodies may suffer pain or illness, so Heaven is unable to know why within the natural sphere omens or calamities may occur. “If man cannot ensure that his ears and eyes are ever acute and clear-sighted, then likewise Heaven cannot ensure that the sun and moon may [sometimes] suffer eclipses. [Another example…] One should serve these two parents (the universe) as one does one’s own parents and should regard all people as one’s siblings, because they, like us, belong to these universal parents. In the seventeenth century, Wang Fu-chih argued that just as the hands, feet, ears, eyes, and mental activities constitute a person, so the Yin and Yang and the Five Elements constitute Heaven. And in the late nineteenth century, T’an Ssu-t’ung maintained that just as the power of the brain unites the five senses and the bodily framework into a single organism, so the power of electricity unites Heaven, Earth, the myriad creatures, and human beings into a single organism.
Analogies of this sort all reflect an anthropocentric point of view and so could contribute little to natural science. Although similar theories arose in Europe and long persisted, they failed to dominate philosophical thinking to the same degree. By 1600, or 1650 at the latest, they had all disappeared from scientific writings or continued only as occassional rhetorical survivals.” [321-4]
; More of this silliness on [136,260-3,346-7]
• “Owing to the lack of competition in creative thinking, criticism on the basis of objectivity, tests in terms of empiricism, and checks by logical reasoning, traditional Chinese science generally stayed at an archaic or underdeveloped status. A distant and vague analogy would be accepted as a piece of convincing evidence.” [Qian 85:68]
7. • “The almost total absence of this type of phenomenon [public debate, judicial dialogue] in Chinese society meant that a great deal of Indian logic, which in origin was a logic of dialogue, had no significance for the Chinese. For this reason Indian logic could not be taken over in its original form by the Chinese.” [Nakamura 64:188-9]
; “Since nomothetical sciences did not develop in China, it is natural that logic which deals with the laws for the expression of thought did not develop either…
In later times Indian logic was introduced into China, but it exerted no significant influence on the ways of thinking of the Chinese. It soon declined and disappeared as a branch of study…
In the history of the introduction of Buddhist logic into China we can observe several striking phenomena. First, very few logical works were translated into Chinese. If we compare that number with the vastly larger number of such works which were translated into Tibetan, we are bound to conclude that interest in Buddhist logic was very slight among the Chinese. Secondly, only logical works of the simplest kind were translated into Chinese and voluminous works intended to be systematic expositions of the whole science of logic were left untranslated…
Thus Indian logic was accepted only in part and even the part that was accepted was not understood in the sense of the Indian originals. Even Hsüan-tsang, who introduced Indian logic, seems not to have fully understood it…
Logical studies having no basis in traditional Chinese thought never became significant and exerted very little influence on later Chinese thought. Most Chinese scholars merely accepted the authority of the Canon. This fact will probably betray a weakness in logical thinking on the part of scholars. It should be noted that this is in striking contrast to the importance and vitality of logical studies in Tibet.” [191-3]
; “Exact logical thought, which would critically examine statements in the sacred books themselves, is not an outstanding trait of those Chinese ways of thinking in which classical conservatism regards the authority of the sacred books to be absolute. This is the reason why Indian logic did not take root in China…
This rationalistic theory of knowledge was brought to China and taught together with Mohist formal logic, but both were not at all in tune with most Chinese who had high regard for the authority of ancient traditions. They wished to regard traditional knowledge as the solid basis of knowledge at any rate, and did not permit sense and inference as adequate substitutes for the traditional ground of knowledge in China. They insisted that the traditional sacred books are more authoritative than knowledge based upon sense and inference, and considered it natural to feel this way.” [211-2]
• “In other fields of science [as well as in mathematics], the Chinese way of thinking generally lacked accuracy in defining, exactness in formulating, rigour in proving, and logic in explaining.” [Qian 85:67]
• See the [Hannas 03:104-5] citation in the notes of the last section.
• “It is always difficult to make a Chinese perceive that two forms of belief are mutually exclusive. He knows nothing about logical contradictories, and cares even less. He has learned by instinct the art of reconciling propositions which are inherently irreconcilable, by violently affirming each of them, paying no heed whatever to their mutual relations. He is thus prepared by all his intellectual training to allow the most incongruous forms of belief to unite, as fluids mingle by endosmosis and exosmosis. He has carried “intellectual hospitality” to the point of logical suicide, but he does not know it, and cannot be made to understand it when he is told.” [Smith 94:294-5]
8. • See the [Qian 85:65-6] citation, above.
• “[T]he overwhelming thrust of Chinese mathematics went toward the practical and utilitarian… Characteristically, Chinese mathematicians never developed a formal geometry, logical proofs, or deductive mathematical systems such as those found in Euclid.” [McClellan 06:130]
9. • See the [Bond 91:30-1] citation in the last section.
• “The reluctance [of Chinese to debate] extends to the very nature of communication and rhetoric. Western rhetoric, which provides the underlying structure for everything from scientific reports to policy position papers, usually has some variation of the following form:
– background;
– problem;
– hypothesis or proposed proposition;
– means of testing;
– evidence;
– arguments as to what the evidence means;
– refutation of possible counterarguments; and
– conclusion and recommendations.
Most Westerners I speak to about this format take it for granted that it is universal: How else could one communicate findings and recommendations briskly and convincingly or even think clearly about what one is doing? The truth is, however, that this linear rhetoric form is not at all common in the East. For my own Asian students, I find that the linear rhetoric form is the last crucial thing they learn on their road to becoming fully functioning social scientists.” [Nisbett 03:196]
10. • “In the case of probabilistic thinking, in which people estimate the likelihood of uncertain events, Wright [et al] reported that Hong Kong Chinese subjects, together with some other Asians, had a less differentiated view of uncertainty than British subjects. In this study, subjects were a) asked questions about their views on uncertain events, such as ‘Will you catch a head cold in the next three months?’; b) asked questions on factual matters that most people are uncertain about, such as ‘Is the Suez Canal over 100 miles long?’; c) asked two-choice-alternative questions such as ‘Which is longer: the Panama Canal or the Suez Canal?”; and d) given a questionnaire to measure the fineness with which they could discriminate between probability words and phrases. The British subjects consistently showed a greater ability to adopt a probabilistic set, to discriminate uncertainty finely, and to express the uncertainty.” [Bond 86:53-4]
11. • “Chinese names like Wong are greatly… under represented in Who’s Who in American Law. On the basis of [a name checking method, Weyl] constructs a performance co-efficient for which average achievement is 100. A co-efficient of 200 means that an ethnic group appears twice as frequently in reference works of occupational distinction as would be expected from its numbers in the total population, while a co-efficient of 50 means that it appears half as often. In his first study he finds that ethnic Chinese obtained performance coefficients of… only 54 in law (Weyl, 1969). His second study on later data confirms this pattern for the 1980s, when ethnic Chinese obtained a performance coefficient for law [of] only 24.” [Lynn 91]
————
IV-6. Religion and superstition.
A. Chinese are more susceptible to superstitious claims, because they are less conscious of contradictions with natural principles.
In contradiction to scientific principles, i.e. natural laws, are beliefs in religion and superstition. When given a supernatural claim, an abstract-perceiver applies more abstract, general principles of natural laws to them and so is more aware of contradictions with them; whereas a concrete-perceiver is more likely to accept such claims as unique outcomes of unique situations including the posited supernatural power (section III-2.D-E). When considering claims of supernatural agency and benefits of appealing to such, an analytic thinker will consider natural laws inconsistent with them, i.e. reference situations of his knowledge and experience with abstractly-similar natural phenomena and the principles thereof. An unanalytic thinker, on the other hand, will be more inclined to optimistically (or pessimistically) accept the proffered claims. Unsurprisingly, Chinese have greater faith in religious/superstitious quackery than do Whites, notwithstanding the number of Whites deluded by Judeo-Christianity.
————
B. Judeo-Christianity is a relatively plausible religion that generally accepts natural laws.
For all the absurdity that may be found in the Bible, Judeo-Christianity (J-C) is a relatively plausible means of entreatment for magical benefaction. Yahweh is more or less just a single entity, invisible and detached from the physical world (and so not readily disproven), a father figure who supposedly created people in his own image and so has reason to care for them—at least those credulous enough to believe in him. Most White J-Cs believe that Yahweh doesn’t violate natural laws; that he enforces these laws himself [1]. Much of the Biblical nonsense is of course ignored. The greater skepticism of Whites is countered by the greater imagination and grandiloquence of their magic men. Their evangelists are enrapturing and the Bible has intriguing tales.
Judeo-Christian organizations are larger than Chinese religious organizations, but this is because Chinese religion is far more diffused [2], the Chinese government has persistently restricted them [3], and because J-C organizations are social, moral, charitable, and political enterprises with proselytic zeal, unlike the Chinese [4]. The effort J-Cs invest in entreating Yahweh for magical benefaction and their expectation of such are difficult to measure, because their many reasons for ‘church-going’ are difficult to disentangle. The J-Cs I know aren’t expecting a windfall from Yahweh any time soon, and don’t bother asking for one. Nor do they live in fear of the Devil, nor are they eager to enter the pearly gates.
1. • “Both astrology and alchemy remained sources of interest to intellectuals long after the Middle Ages, but the importance of the magical element in medieval science has been exaggerated. “The striking thing about the [twelfth] century,” in the words of Richard Dales, “is the attitudes of its scientists. . .daring, original, inventive, skeptical of traditional authorities. . .determined to discover purely rational explanations of natural phenomena,” in short, portending “a new age in the history of scientific thought.”
The healthy skepticism of the men of the twelfth-century renaissance was underpinned by a distinct, even enthusiastic naïveté (Abelard and Héloïse, his bluestocking mistress, named their son Astrolabe). Devout clergymen, they innocently conceived investigation of the natural world as their Christian duty, undertaken in a spirit of gratitude toward God, “to help men reach a higher level of understanding of the Creator” (Tina Stiefel). So far from anticipating conflict between study of natural phenomena and Church doctrine, they felt that their researches helped combat the ancient, still popular pagan superstitions centered on magical trees, rocks, streams, and forests. In the demythologizing of nature, the medieval Church, following the lead of Boethius, anticipated the Renaissance humanists. As George Ovitt observes, “The scientia of the Middle Ages was theology, but theology was understood to include not only the nature of God and of moral laws, but also the nature of the world created by God.”” [Gies 94:164]
• “The editorial description of [From Aristotle to Copernicus (2004)] reads:
‘Historian Edward Grant illuminates how today’s scientific culture originated with the religious thinkers of the Middle Ages. In the early centuries of Christianity, Christians studied science and natural philosophy only to the extent that these subjects proved useful for a better understanding of the Christian faith, not to acquire knowledge for its own sake. However, with the influx of Greco-Arabic science and natural philosophy into Western Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Christian attitude toward science changed dramatically. Despite some tensions in the thirteenth century, the Church and its theologians became favorably disposed toward science and natural philosophy and used them extensively in their theological deliberations.’
Grant does emphasize changes during and after the twelfth century, but he also brings up the ways in which early Christians eagerly assimilated the classical heritage, setting the ground for the breakthrough in the twelfth century. In another book, God and Reason in the Middle Ages (2001), Grant distinctly states that the “self-conscious use of reason and the emphasis on rationality go back to the classical Greeks,” and that “despite” some difficulties in the transmission and spread of this heritage during the centuries after the fall of Rome and the coming of the Germanic peoples and Vikings, “natural philosophy was welcomed within Western Christendom.” The following passage is worth citing: ‘With perhaps few exceptions, philosophers, scientists and natural philosophers in the ancient and medieval periods believed unequivocally in the existence of a unique, and objective world that, with the exception of miracles, was regarded as intelligible, lawful, and essentially knowable.’
Grant specifically says that from the first centuries A.D., Christianity adopted the idea of using philosophy and science… for comprehending revealed theology, providing as well a section on the “Early Stirrings [in reason and logic] in the Ninth to Eleventh Centuries.”” [Duchesne 14:65-6]
; “Every single one of the sources he cites stands against these claims [that medieval Christian scholars resisted Aristolean logical reasoning regarding natural laws]. The title of James Hannam’s God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science, speaks for itself. Richard Olson’s Science and Religion, 1450–1900: From Copernicus to Darwin63 is about the profound influence Christianity had on the lives and work of Galileo, Newton, and Darwin. Edward Grant’s Planets, Stars and Orbs: The Medieval Cosmos, 1200–1687 argues that medieval cosmology was a fusion of pagan Greek ideas and biblical descriptions of the world. The same applies to three other sources he uses.
What is all the more perplexing is the continuous effort by O’Brien to paint Islam as the religion that gave Christian Europe the intellectual sources to think of natural phenomena in terms of natural laws explainable by reason, when it was the other way around. The idea that emerges out of Christian Europe early on is that God is conterminous with reason, whereas in Islam the idea that Allah has limits to his own arbitrary willfulness remains unthinkable to this day. As Robert Reilly argues in The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis, Islam was at first engaged with Aristotle but eventually rejected his reasoning when Abu Hamid al-Ghazali established a theology in which Allah came to be portrayed as the personal and immediate director of the movement of every molecule in the universe through his sheer incomprehensible willfulness. In contrast, starting with St. Anselm’s (1033–1109) effort to logically demonstrate the existence of God and continuing with Aquinas and others, Christianity went on to conceptualize the movement of material bodies in terms of natural laws.” [70-1]
• “So the question “Why in Europe?” boils down to “Why did science as we know it develop in Europe?” This is a complex question and we can only touch on two important parts of the answer here. First, Medieval universities provided a neutral space in which science could develop cumulatively. Second, the Christian church—largely as a result of historical accident—accepted and encouraged the natural philosophy that evolved into early modern science…
[P]ossible conflicts were suggested by works on such broader subjects as the nature of the cosmos, free will versus determinism, and the creation of the world, all of which came under the rubric of “natural philosophy.” Instead of rejecting this branch of Classical learning as subversive, the church sought to Christianise it. Reconciling Classical learning, particularly the writings of Aristotle, with religious doctrine became the most important research program of the 12th and 13th centuries, “In broad terms this meant bringing together in a single whole, views based upon the amalgam of Jewish history and poetry called the Bible (in the Greek translation known as the Septuagint, which dated from c. 200-100 BC) with the philosophy and science of the advanced urban civilisation of Greece—a formidable task”…
Universities went on to solidify Aristotelian naturalistic doctrines in their synthesis of Greco-Islamic learning and Christianity that became the official curriculum of all Medieval Western universities. As Lynn White (90) puts it “…the chief period of Europe’s reappropriation of Greek science extends from the later eleventh century through the thirteenth century and marks the birth of our present scientific movement.” By the 13th and 14th centuries, the church, academics, and most religious people were on side with those who understood the world to be controlled by natural laws—laws that it was man’s duty to discover.” [Bekar 02:13-4]
2. • See my review of Chinese diffused religions in the following sections (C-F).
• Bodde reviews the vast extent of Chinese diffused religion, and the disorder and decline of institutional religions Buddhism and Taoism, in part due to government suppression, in [Bodde 91:148-58]; “The fact that diffused religion was all-pervasive in China inevitably meant that the role of institutional religions was correspondingly lessened, as compared with their institutional counterparts in many other societies.” [153]
• “This eclectic attitude to religion meant that there were no such things as church membership or regular congregational worship. The ordinary people did not derive their religious beliefs from sermons or from readings of sacred scriptures, but mainly from mythological lore in which moral behavior was supported by mythological forces…
Lacking a central organization and restricted in size by the state, [Buddhism] suffered also from the eclecticism of the Chinese attitude toward religion, which went so far that many Buddhist monasteries were given names which had a Confucian ring to them…
So in recent centuries the impact of Buddhism on the Chinese people has not been in the form of doctrinal developments nor have the monasteries and temples played an essential role in its influence, although the monstic life did continue to fulfill an important social function as a haven for those who lacked the all-important support of family and clan. Rather it is to be seen in the diffusion throughout society of certain key ideas and the general influence they had on Chinese culture… [T]he deities of both Buddhism and Taoism tended to merge into an amorphous popular religion. Both religions even made their impact on the ancient indigenous practice of ancestor worship, for their priests participated with their own rites in funerals and sacrifices. So, although as separate institutions these two religions with their hostile messages could have been a threat to the state, in the end they were tamed by it, and Buddhist beliefs in particular helped to maintain the stability of social institutions.” [Dawson 78:165-7]
3. • See sections II-8.C-D and their sources.
4. • Townsend wrote ~1930: “The common [Chinese] people know only vaguely of Confucianism and Buddhism and Taoism, terms which among them are mere misnomer identifications of misty superstitions and propitiatory rites, having little or no connection with tenets of organized religious cults. If you ask the average illiterate Chinese what religion he belongs to or believes in, he will not comprehend the question. The Mohammedan minority among them is slightly more definite in allegiance, but even the elsewhere militant Mohammedanism died out into a tepid meaninglessness of name when it fell upon Chinese spiritual sterility.
There is not among the Chinese anything akin to the religious sense as it prevails in India, the Semitic world, among Negroes, Latins, or Southerners of the United States. The priestcraft of China has lacked the pedagogic urge, and nothing in the way of instruction appears to have been done for those, the majority, unable to read the analects and aphorisms of the ancient scholars. The run-of-the-mill Chinese was never molested by the priest, and the temples were and are used almost wholly for propitiatory offerings in times of distress, or for good luck on the birthday of a son or some such felicitous occasion.” [Townsend 33:150-1]
————
C. Chinese religions and superstitions are more extensive and difficult to swallow.
With Buddhism and Taoism, Chinese are promised similar goodies as Christians, such as an afterlife and small miracles [1]. The Chinese with their lack of concern for contradictions tend to mix Buddhism and Taoism together with Confucianism [2]. But Chinese religiosity extends far beyond the primary religions into a broad miscellany of superstitions [3]. Chinese believe in many deities, such as the Jade Emperor and his vast retinue of local gods [4], a kitchen god for each home (who makes yearly reports on a family’s conduct), door gods, a toilet god, and gods of wealth [5]; along with deified people including family patriarchs, sages, martyrs, and founders of trade guilds [6]. Those who passed imperial examinations were regarded as incarnations of star gods [7]. Chinese worship goofy animal gods such as a monkey, a fox, a weasel, a hedgehog, a snake, and a rat [8]. The Chinese are also animists, attributing personalities to natural entities such as the sun and moon, rain, mountains, and rivers [9]. The Chinese countryside teems with temples where deities are given their due offerings [10].
1. • Taoism includes lots of mystical and magic stuff. See [Fairbank 76:124-5] and [Dawson 78:102-3]
• The growth of Chinese Buddhism, similarly as early Christianity, was largely based on claimed miracles and the promise of reincarnation. See [Dawson 78:118-9,167].
• “The popular sects might borrow Taoist, Manichaean (good versus evil, light versus darkness) or Buddhist beliefs or make a syncretic mixture of them, but they usually featured a shamanistic leadership of inspired masters in touch with the spirit world who foretold that a great disaster and judgment day would come, a “chiliastic” or “millenarian” idea (by analogy to the medieval belief in the second coming of Christ after 1000 years). In this future cataclysm only the sect believer would attain salvation and rebirth.” [Fairbank 76:137]
• “According to a latest survey, 85% of Chinese people have religious beliefs or had some religious practices and only 15% of them are real atheists. The real atheists here refer to those who lack belief in the existence of deities and do not join in any religious activities. 185 million people believe in Buddhism and 33 million have faith in Christianity and believes in the existence of God. Only 12 million people are Taoists, although more than one hundred million have taken part in Taoism activities before. Thus, it is obvious that the Buddhism has the widest influence. The other major religions are Taoism, Confucianism, Islam and Christianity.”
• www.travelchinaguide.com/intro/religion/
• “Taoism, like Buddhism – the second-most-common choice for a funeral service in Hong Kong, followed by a Catholic ceremony – holds that humans undergo an endless cycle of death and rebirth. In between, the soul resides in various realms of good and evil.
During the service, priests chant scriptures – their voices often inaudible against a cacophony of drums, cymbals, suonas, erhus and flutes – to uplift the soul of the departed and prevent their descent into hell…” [Ng 17]
2. • “The Chinese in the medieval period did not feel any contradiction in the fact that they followed Buddhism and also esteemed the Confucian classics as manifestations of truth at the same time…
[Indians] did not maintain, however, that the doctrines of these religions and philosophies could be matched and were mutually alike. The
Chinese, on the contrary, simply kept asserting that the doctrines were the same…
Yen-chih-t’ui of the Northern Chai dynasty stated that the five permanent moral rules of Confucianism were the same as the five precepts of Buddhism. In the Sung dynasty as well, Ch’i-sung interpreted the ten good virtues and five precepts of Buddhism as identical with the five permanent moral rules and the idea of benevolence and justice of Confucianism. Yang-kuei-shan and Hsieh-shang-ts’ai asserted the correspondence between each idea of Buddhism and each idea of Confucianism. According to their opinion, Buddhism and Confucianism were exactly the same teaching. Therefore, the founders of both teachings were the same. “The Duke of Chou and K’ung-fu-tzu are identical with the Buddha, and the Buddha is identical with the Duke of Chou and K’ung-fu-tzu at the same time. . . .The term Buddha is Sanskrit while the Chinese use Chüeh (enlightenment). Both connote the meaning of realization of truth. . . . ” The same statements are asserted about the oneness of Buddhism and Taoism. “Taoism is identical with Buddhism and Buddhism identical with Taoism at the same time. . . .” What stands out in this sort of reasoning is a certain sort of utilitarianism and easy compromise, with cold logical consideration completely abandoned.” [Nakamura 64:286-1]
; “This arbitrary syncretism had a great influence on the common people, and is one of the striking characteristics of the modern Chinese religions. Typical of this compromising and syncretic attitude is that seen in a Taoist temple where many images of various deities, including a central image of Lao-tzu, are enshrined. A Taoistic classic mentions that Sakyamuni, Lao-tzu, Christ, Mohammed, and Hsiang-t’o were fellow-deities; consequently, a follower of any religion can become a Taoist without conversion. Among the various deities revered in a Taoist temple are St. John of Christianity, Chu-ko-wu-hou and Yüeh-fei, images of Avalokitesvara, and Sakyamuni, the Prajña-paramita-hrdaya.sutra (Wisdom of the Heart Sutra), and Kao-shih-kuan-yin-ching (a Goddess of Mercy Sutra).
The amalgamation of Buddhism and Taoism started in the period of the Six Dynasties (222–589) and became very prominent in and after the Ch’ing dynasty. In famous large Buddhist temples today, Kuan-ti (a god of War) is enshrined in most cases, with divination and fortune-telling performed. Such being the case, modern Chinese do not discriminate between Buddhism and Taoism…
Another example of the compromising and syncretic tendency of the Chinese is that some other equally powerful layman in Peking might be a follower of the Hung-wan religion as well as a follower of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism at the same time. He sincerely believes in all of them together…” [293-4]
• “It is of no consequence to the Chinese which of the two he employs, and he will not improbably call them both at once, and thus be at once “a Buddhist” and “a Taoist.” Thus the same individual is at once a Confucianist, a Buddhist, and a Taoist, and with no sense of incongruity. Buddhism swallowed Taoism, Taoism swallowed Confucianism, but at last the latter swallowed both Buddhism and Taoism together, and thus “the three religions are one!”…
In China Confucianism is the base, and all Chinese are Confucianists, as all English are Saxons. To what extent Buddhist or Taoist ideas, phraseology, and practices may be superimposed upon this base, will be determined by circumstances. But to the Chinese there is no more incongruity or contradiction in the combination of the “three religions” in one ceremony, than there is to our thought in the interweaving of words of diverse national origin in the same sentence.
It is always difficult to make a Chinese perceive that two forms of belief are mutually exclusive. He knows nothing about logical contradictories, and cares even less. He has learned by instinct the art of reconciling propositions which are inherently irreconcilable, by violently affirming each of them, paying no heed whatever to their mutual relations. He is thus prepared by all his intellectual training to allow the most incongruous forms of belief to unite, as fluids mingle by endosmosis and exosmosis. He has carried “intellectual hospitality” to the point of logical suicide, but he does not know it, and cannot be made to understand it when he is told.” [Smith 94:294-5]
3. • “Modern studies in China and abroad are just beginning to penetrate the vast ocean of the Chinese people’s religious experience below the level of the Confucian ruling class who left the written record of it. This is the area that today’s Marxist ruling class contemns as “popular superstitions,” a truly bewildering variety of beliefs and practices, the more various because so locally fragmented, by which villagers through faith and ritual sought meaning and security amid life’s uncertainties. Peasant religion as part of China’s popular culture of course was much influenced by the higher culture. For example, of the three main types of supernatural spirits, as Arthur Wolf points out, ancestors were everyone’s concern; the local gods of many kinds had all the characteristics of “supernatural counterparts of the imperial bureaucracy,” managing their affairs in a hierarchy of duties and proper procedures; while the ghosts were supernatural equivalents of misfits, wanderers and strangers, usually dangerous, often malicious.” [Fairbank 76:137]
• “[A]ll of life’s activities [in China] have been colored and enriched by religious attitudes derived from a variety of sources, and Buddhism and Taoism have made their own characteristic contributions to the general stock of religious experience. Religion was part of family life through worship of ancestors and household gods, it affected community life through temple festivals, it permeated working life through the worship of patron deities of craft guilds, it conditioned political life through the doctrine of the Son of Heaven, it entered local affairs through the religious duties of the district magistrates, and it influences education through the reverence paid to Confucius…
In fact, religion colored all aspects of Chinese life. The countryside teemed with temples, which the ordinary Chinese patronized according to the needs of the moment. If money was wanted, there were many gods of wealth, and if children were wanted, the local temple to Kuanyin might be the solution to one’s problems. For the common people the purpose of religion was to obtain happiness and ward off evil, and to this end they sought the aid of the most efficacious gods. People were not concerned with the boundaries between various faiths, and country priests sometimes did not even know what religions their temple belonged to, for the gods had got themselves mixed up into a common pantheon. A man’s morality might be derived from Confucian ideas with an admixture of Buddhism, but the generality of gods and spirits was to punish him if he erred and reward him if he behaved morally. The moral order was heavily dependent on these popular religious beliefs as a deterrent to deviation from its rules. People were conscious of ever-present divinities inspecting their conduct; for instance, the kitchen god made yearly reports on the conduct of the family to the Jade Emperor, who presided over a bureaucracy of deities who would eventually be called upon to judge one’s performance and determine one’s future in the afterlife.” [Dawson 78:164-5]
• “Besides the foregoing [Buddhism and religious Taosim], there was a third and least well organized sector of Chinese institutional religion, consisting of practices perpetuated from the old classical religion by diviners, geomancers, sorcerors, and other religious agents… His major argument is that, despite their organizational weakness, they constituted a professional (or at least semi-professional) class of men who were especially trained for, and made a living by, their religious activities.
Under diffused religion, Yang lists a variety of cults whose common feature is the absence of professional practitioners or of an organization structure separate separate from that of social groups within which they function. They include the cult of ancestors and house gods within the family; the cult of patron gods and deified founders of trades and occupations within the guild; the cult of the gods of the soil, rivers, mountains, the city, and other localized divinities within the community; and, on the national level, that of more universal divinities, either naturalistic or deified human beings. Within each category the cult is conducted primarily or entirely by nonprofessionals: the head of the family or clan, the leading officers of the guild, the community leaders. Finally, on the national level, “the performance of cultic rituals was a part of the administrative routine of the governing officials and the local gentry. The emperor and his officialdom constituted the priesthood for ethico-political worship, and the entire population of the empire was theoretically the grand congregation.” [Bodde 91:152]
4. • On the close connection with divinity the Chinese emperor, the “Son of Heaven”, was believed to have, see section II-8.B and its sources.
• “[China’s] capital was not only conceived as the place where man tried to keep open a channel of communication with the supernatural and demonstrate by appropriate rituals his participation in cosmic events. It was also thought of as the place where supernatural power was channeled down to Earth and whence it radiated to the four quarters. Hence the ancient texts commonly referred to the supernatural power or virtue (te) of the Son of Heaven radiating from him so as to protect all within the seas on all four sides. This was the reason why the sage emperor Shun was said to have inaugerated his reign by opening gates in his capital city facing towards each of the cardinal points.” [Dawson 78:56]
; “[A] branch of [a Chinese magistrate’s] duties which had to be meticulously observed was the religious role. In the eyes of the people he was not only the local representative of the imperial government but also chief priest of the region. In the popular imagination in late imperial China, the gods had become organized into a kind of bureaucracy which was an extension of the earthly bureaucracy, and there was an especially close link between the county magistrate and the God of Walls and Moats (or city god) of the city in which the magistrate had his official residence. The city god was the magistrate’s opposite number in the pantheon, so on arrival to take up office a magistrate would make sacrifice to the god and swear an oath invoking his holy wrath if he were corrupt or unjust in his administration. He also burnt incense at his temple once a fortnight and visited it on occasions of crisis and calamity. The magistrate also made periodic visits to the temples of Confucius, of the Gods of War and Literature, and to a great many other local shrines. In times of drought he was expected to pray to the gods for rain. Not only would he go to the local temples to pray, but the people would bring images of the gods to his yamen for him to pray to them. Although Confucianism’s basic concern with matters of this world rather than the next has often led both Europeans and modern Chinese eager to rescue their culture from the charge of superstition to look upon the Confucian scholar as an agnostic philosopher, in fact the district magistrate spent much of his time engaged in reliogious ceremonies. This closeness to the supernatural powers together with the people’s consciousness that he was also in his official role the representative of the Son of Heaven gave him a kind of superhuman authority which was very necessary if he were to fulfil even a part of the heavy responsibilities which befell him.” [52-3]
; “This divine bureaucracy was presided over by the Jade Emperor, and it rewarded the good and punished the evil both in this life and in the hereafter. It had the same paraphernalia of filing systems and red tape associated with the earthly bureaucracy and the same kind of rules of protocol. Men had to go through the proper channels when approaching the gods, so the common people could only appeal to subordinate deities. City gods, who filled a role in this divine bureaucracy comparable with that of the district magistrate among living bureaucrats, were graded according to the size of the territory they administered; and they occupied what were envisaged as official posts…” [168]
5. • “But although [ancestor worship] was the most important feature of the religious life of the family, there were other objects of devotion. The kitchen god acted as a kind of inspector of the family on behalf of the nether world, and there were door gods to protect the family, wealth gods to bring it prosperity, and even the privy was presided over by its own special deity. Every home was therefore a centre of intense religious activity, in which the ritual which united the family on all important occasions and made it seem a strong, divinely inspired, and immutable insitution, was one of the supremely conservative features of the Chinese experience.” [Dawson 78:155-6]
; On China’s gods of wealth and the kitchen god who “made yearly reports on the conduct of the family to the Jade Emperor”, see the [Dawson 78:164-5] citation, above.
6. • On the pervasive Chinese worship of ancestors, “the essential and universal religion of the Chinese”, see [Dawson 78:153-5]. On their elaborate mourning rites with length of time, etc. prescribed according to one’s relationship with the deceased, see [Dawson 78:151-3] and [Bodde 91:197-8]. There was a permanent obligation to perform rites at graves and shrines [Dawson 78:153-5]. It was even necessary to keep the dead informed of family goings-on: “It was the duty of the living to keep the dead informed about family affairs, and news of bureaucratic careers must often have played an important part in these communiques. Po Chu-i addressed his brother’s soul with news of his latest appointments…” [Dawson 78:278]
• “Various folk religions existed in China from ancient times and exerted their influence not only on the common people, but also on intellectuals who partly followed these religions. Certain supernatural beings beyond human power were invoked. From ancient times, ancestor worship was an important ceremony in China by which the family and its prosperity were upheld. It was therefore impossible to change this sort of worship into a supernatural and metaphysical religion… Patriarchs and sages were deified and worshipped, and even the scriptures written by them were highly respected by the people, in spite of the fact that a saint is still a human being. In the Han dynasty, Confucianists taught ways of ridding oneself of disasters and receiving good fortune, as well as many other superstitions. Lao-tzu was also worshipped by some people; his naturalistic doctrine was combined with a theory which insisted on the existence of immortal human beings, and which explained how one can attain immortality. Taoism was founded by organizing and systematizing the folk faiths centered on this theory of superhuman beings, and developed through Buddhist influence, but also influenced Chinese Buddhism. ” [Nakamura 64:235-6]
• “The local official had to sacrifice at the appropriate times to all officially recognized gods within his jurisdiction, on the one hand the gods of earth and grain, of the local mountain and rivers, and of the forces of nature (wind, thunder, rain, etc.), and on the other hand the spirits of sage monarchs, brilliant princes, loyal officials, and heroic martyrs whose temples lay within his district. In other words they had to worship not only divinities symbolizing natural forces, but also those related to political leadership and civic virtues.” [Dawson 78:168]
• “[Chinese religions] include the cult of ancestors and house gods within the family; the cult of patron gods and deified founders of trades and occupations within the guild… and other localized divinities within the community; and, on the national level, that of more universal divinities, either naturalistic or deified human beings.” [Bodde 91:152]
7. • “The common people regarded those who passed the higher examinations as incarnations of the star gods. An aura of the supernatural also pervaded the examination halls in the minds of the candidates. So intense was their desire for success that many of them were extremely superstitious, and there were many stories illustrating the common belief that success or failure depended on the intervention of the spirits.” [Dawson 78:37]
8. • “It has often been remarked, and with every appearance of truth, that there is no other civilised nation in existence which is under such bondage to superstition and credulity as the Chinese. Wealthy merchants and learned scholars are not ashamed to be seen, on the two days of the month set apart for that purpose, worshipping the fox, the weasel, the hedgehog, the snake, and the rat, all of which in printed placards are styled “Their Excellencies,” and are thought to have an important effect on human destiny.
It is not many years since the most prominent statesman in China fell on his knees before a water-snake which some one had been pleased to represent as an embodiment of the god of floods, supposed to be the incarnation of an official of a former dynasty, whose success in dealing with brimming rivers was held to be miraculous. This habit of worshipping a snake, alleged to be a god, whenever floods devastate China appears to be a general one. In districts at a distance from a river, any ordinary land-serpent will pass as a god and “no questions asked.” If the waters subside, extensive theatrical performances may be held in honour of the god who has granted this boon, to wit, the snake, which is placed on a tray in a temple or other public place for the purpose. The District Magistrate, and all other officers, go there every day to prostrate themselves and to bum incense to the divinity. A river-god is generally regarded as the rain-god in regions adjacent to waterways, but at a little distance in the interior, the god of war, Kuan Ti, is much more likely to be worshipped for the same purpose; but sometimes both are supplanted by the goddess of mercy. To a Chinese this does not seem at all irrational, for his mind is free from all presumptions as to the unity of nature, and it is very hard for him to appreciate the absurdity, even when it is demonstrated to him.
In connection with these prayers for rain, another curious and most significant fact has often been brought to our notice. In the famous Chinese novel called “Travels to the West,” one of the principal characters was originally a monkey hatched from a stone, and by slow degrees of evolution developed into a man. In some places this imaginary being is worshipped as a rain-god, to the exclusion of both the river-god and the god of war. No instance could put in a clearer fight than this the total lack in China of any dividing line between the real and the fictitious.” [Smith 94:296-8]
9. • “The local official had to sacrifice at the appropriate times to all officially recognized gods within his jurisdiction, on the one hand the gods of earth and grain, of the local mountain and rivers, and of the forces of nature (wind, thunder, rain, etc.), and on the other hand the spirits of sage monarchs, brilliant princes, loyal officials, and heroic martyrs whose temples lay within his district. In other words they had to worship not only divinities symbolizing natural forces, but also those related to political leadership and civic virtues.” [Dawson 78:168]
• “[B]oth the folk religion and the state cult were overwhelmingly animistic. Since early times, such forces and objects of nature as the sun and moon, stars, thunder, rain, drought, the soil, mountains, rivers and many more were all deified and could be recipients of offerings. Their cults continued until the present century…
The Altar of Heaven in Peking was not dedicated, as often popularly supposed, solely to Heaven (in this context a deity, not “nature”), in actual fact, the other subordinate deities included at the same altar were those of sun, moon, Great Dipper, the five planets, the twenty-eight constellations, the other stars, the clouds, rain, winds and thunder.
The same situation obtained among the various nonofficial cults… [Taoist adepts] conceived of the different parts of the human body as being under the jurisdiction of an incredibly large number of divinities. Typical is the following: ‘The divinity of the hair is called “Deployed,” the divinity of the two eyes is called “Abundant Light,” the divinity of the top of the head is called “Father King of the East,”. . .[and so for other parts of the body]…
One of the characteristics of animism is its attribution of human moral qualities to the forces and objects of nature…[Examples]” [Bodde 91:318-20]
; See also [260-3].
10. • See the [Dawson 78:164-5] citation, above.
————
D. Superstition deeply permeates Chinese people’s everyday activities.
Chinese are big on magical practices such as astrology and divination, fortune-telling, geomancy, magic medicine, and a wide variety of petty superstitions. Some Whites have believed in astrology, but the Chinese made it a government-run enterprise and carried it into modern times [1]. Chinese believe that unusual astronomical phenomena are signals (portents) from deities on how rulers are performing, and that natural disasters such as earthquakes and droughts are consequences of official misconduct [2]. China’s calendars and almanacs are based on astrology, which Chinese use to check for marriage compatibility and auspicious times to have sex, conduct business, schedule burials, and so on [3]. Fortune-telling is big business in China, coming in many forms beyond astrology, including face and palm reading and shaking of fortune sticks and bamboo blocks [4]. Fortune-tellers are highly respected, and advise businessmen on important investment decisions [5]. Another big business in China is geomancy (Feng Shui), which informs the Chinese where to site and how to arrange buildings, homes, and grave sites, to bring about a ‘positive qi energy flow’ [6]. Building a home that faces north, or blocking the qi flow through the front yard, would bring ruin to your family.
1. • On Chinese astronomy being astrology run by the government, see section II-8.C and its sources.
• “The Chinese Bureau of Mathematics and Astronomy… was located within one of the great bureaucratic divisions of the Chinese government called the Ministry of Rites. That ministry had a mandate to administer state ceremonies, rituals, and sacrifices but also the civil service examinations used to recruit scholars to government service. Within that large organisation, the Bureau of Astronomy was responsible for all astronomical activities, which included agronomical observation, the determination of planetary movements, calendar making, and divination. This latter activity involved determining lucky and unlucky days for a whole range of human activities such as taking a trip, buying or selling property, arranging a marriage, and scheduling a burial and its siting.
The whole cosmological system of the Chinese was embedded in a moralistic outlook that was grounded in a metaphysical view linking the organic evolution of the heavens and human events, especially the activities of the royal family. Signs in the heavens, it was thought, could indicate what would happen on earth, whereas the misbehavior of Chinese officials, especially the emperor, could result in famines, earthquakes, droughts, or hail storms. The mere occurrence of such events suggested that things on earth were out of order and were displeasing to the spirit world. Similarly, anomalies in the heavens were taken as portents of the future; hence, astronomers looking at the sky might divine future events that should only be known to the emperor.
From this point of view, various celestial events — eclipses, shooting stars, conjunctions of planets and stars —could be seen as heavenly warnings. As such, they could be interpreted as heaven-sent reports on the state of human affairs. For these reasons, there was a powerful inclination to keep sky watching confined to the official bureaucracy whose personnel were required to keep a constant vigil on the skies and to report all unusual events to the emperor himself.
The main product of the Bureau of Astronomy was the annual calendar: some were designed personally for the emperor, others for the general Chinese population located in the various regions of the country. Those calendars required making meteorological predictions all across the country, which could be a dangerous thing to get wrong. Each year, the presentation of the calendar was celebrated in a very public ceremony in front of the emperor and all his officials, as the Jesuit astronomers were to witness firsthand as creator’s of those calendars.
Within this context, the Chinese were interested in improving predictions of obvious events such as solar and lunar eclipses and the conjunctions of planets and stars. This was clearly an astrological enterprise. Searching for the true scientific or cosmological theory of the universe was an altogether secondary consideration…
In the end, however, Chinese calendar making was above all an astrological enterprise centered on making predictions that came down to designating lucky and unlucky days for the whole daily panoply of Chinese culture. That necessarily involved the actions of the emperor down to the ordinary village peasant. In other words, whereas the Jesuits were concerned with improving the scientific predictions of Chinese astronomy, the Chinese wanted accuracy of auspicious days, accompanied by meteorological prescience for all the regions of China. If the Jesuits were to bring about reform of the Chinese system, they had to participate in this superstitious calendar making that involved not only the selection of auspicious days but also the location and siting of imperial rituals.” [Huff 11:80-2]
; An earthquake that occurred the day after an imperial decision against some Jesuits was believed to mean that the decision was wrong, and the Jesuits were released. See [100-3].
• “Yabuuti characterises the same practice [persistent Chinese recording of astronomical observations], besides research in calendrical science, as ‘unremitting observation of astrological omens’. He also wrote: ‘Chinese astronomers were on the whole bureaucrats first, following established routines to discharge established responsibilities, and only secondarily researchers…” [Qian 85:110]
• “Because disharmony in the heavens supposedly indicated disharmony in the emperor’s rule, astronomy became a matter of state at an early period and the recipient of official patronage. Professional personnel superintended astronomical observations and the calendar even before the unification of China in 221 bc, and soon an Imperial Board or Bureau of Astronomy assumed jurisdiction. Astronomical reports to the emperor were state secrets, and because they dealt with omens, portents, and related politico-religious matters, official astronomers occupied a special place in the overall bureaucracy with offices close to the emperor’s quarters. Chinese astronomers played so delicate a role that they sometimes altered astronomical observations for political reasons. ” [McClellan 06:131]
• “In the past the almanac was compiled by the Imperial staff at the Ancient Observatory in Beijing, and presented to the Son of Heaven before being distributed around the country.”
• www.smoe.org/arcana/astrol10.html
• For more detail on Chinese astronomy being devoted to astrological political purposes, see [Fairbank 57:65-70].
2. • See the [Huff 11:80-2] and [100-3] citations, above.
• “Another moralism of a somewhat different “praise and blame” variety, decidedly relevant to science, has to do with the detailed recordings of eclipses, sunspots, comets, earthquakes, floods, droughts, fires, monstrous births, and other exceptional phenomena, which occupy many chapters in the dynastic histories. The belief that these responses came as responses of nature to human misconduct (particular of the part of the government and perhaps even of the emperor) and the manner in which the “Phenomenalists” of Han times developed this belief into a “science” of omen interpretation has been described by Needham.” [Bodde 91:245]
; “The Han naturalistic thinkers, for example, were much more interested in seeing how human actions might affect the world of nonhuman phenomena than on how “heaven” might influence human affairs. One example out of many is their assertion that the greed of civil officials results in plagues of grain-eating insects having black heads and red bodies, whereas if the insects have black bodies and red heads, it is because the military officials are the greedy ones; punishment of one or the other kind of official will cause the corresponding category of insects to disappear.” [323]
• “According to this principle, natural phenomena and man-made institutions are mutually interrelated, and therefore, if the King, who was the representative of man, governed the country well, then the phenomena of nature, such as weather, wind, and rain would be favorable to man. If the reign of the King was poor, on the other hand, then natural calamities would arise. This idea was most strongly stressed by Tung Chung-shu (c. 179–c. 104 B.C.) of the Early Han dynasty, who thought that disasters were sent from Heaven in order to admonish the King. The thought of Ko-ming (revolution) which means, literally, “to cut off (or take away) the mandate of Heaven from some particular ruler” played a role in checking or correcting the tyranny of autocrats.
This reciprocity between Heaven and man influenced even Chinese historians who have been well known for their accuracy in recording historical events. For example, all accounts of Confucius known to us date his birth in the year 551 B.C., whereas it actually occurred in the year 552 B.C. The reason why the date was falsified by a year is revealing. An eclipse of the sun had always been considered in China, during the last two millennia and more, as a nefas event, indicating the anger of the supernatural powers, especially of the supreme Chinese God, Heaven or T’ien, against some human wrong-doing. Hence, it was considered impossible that a solar eclipse could have occurred in connection with the birth of Confucius, who was early accepted as the greatest of all sages.
This thought was also influential in later periods in China.” [Nakamura 64:282]
• “[I]nstead of attributing apparent discrepencies, i.e., unusual celestial or natural phenomena, to inadequacies of the theories, such phenomena were thought to be the result of human activity, human interference in the balance of nature.” [Fairbank 57:39]
; “Portents are sometimes considered to be connected with supposedly wrong actions of other persons, such as the empress, imperial concubines, princes, feudal lords, and court officials. They express a criticism, therefore, not of the emperor as an individual but rather of the government. Not only the ruler but frequently members of the government suffer bodily harm for their incorrect actions which are reflected by portents. Portents could, at the time they happened, be used as a political tool by one faction at court against another faction.” [53]
3. • See the [Huff 11:80-2] citation, above.
• “The events leading up to marriage were ultimately based on the sequence laid down by the record of rites. Firstly enquiries were made in a girl’s family by a go-between acting on behalf of a family seeking a bride. Then horoscopes were sought by the go-between. Then the girl’s horoscope was matched with the boy’s, to see whether the marriage was made in heaven…” [Dawson 78:142]
• “Divination has been a prominent feature of Chinese culture for at least three thousand years. Until recently, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has actively discouraged the practice, but the ‘Open Policy’ inaugurated by the government in 1978 expanded significantly the state’s tolerance of so-called ‘feudal superstitions’. The result has been a flourishing of many types of divination, including not only ‘siting’ or ‘geomancy’ (see fengshui) but also astrology… Traditional almanacs (huangli, lishu, etc.), which not only designate each day of the lunar year as auspicious or inauspicious for certain activities but also include other predictions based on divination techniques, have become increasingly popular…”
• contemporary_chinese_culture.academic.ru/195/divination_and_fortune-telling
• “For those most Chinese superstitious, the Almanac should be consulted to find the best time to do important things. The Almanac would tell you that if the day is a good day or bad day to have a funeral, sweep the graves of ancestors, worship the dead or move an ancestor’s grave; start construction, move into a new house, visit friends or even travel north; get a haircut or cultivate plants and so on.”
www.chinatownconnection.com/chinese-superstitions.htm
4. • Chinese Fortune Telling
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_fortune_telling
• “A special report on the effect of superstitions on the nation’s youth related that 85% of China’s middle school students have actually had their fortune told!”
www.chinatownconnection.com/chinese-superstitions.htm
• “Having one’s fortune told through Chinese fortune telling (suan ming) is a routine practice in Chinese culture. Consulting a fortune teller is nearly compulsory before major events, like Chinese New Year, wedding engagements, and the birth of children…
There are over a dozen types of Chinese fortune telling methods, but nearly all are based on the Chinese Almanac.
The most basic method of Chinese fortune telling in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other countries like the U.S. remains virtually the same regardless of location.
All a person needs to have his or her fortune told, or that of a friend of family member, is the first and last name, birth date, and age.”
• www.thoughtco.com/chinese-fortune-telling-687583
• Other articles:
Shanghai’s best places for fortune telling and astrology
• www.timeoutshanghai.com/features/Health__Wellness/38372/Shanghais-best-places-for-fortune-telling-and-astrology.html
All hocus pocus or the real deal? Superstitions and fortune telling in Hong Kong
• yp.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/97239/all-hocus-pocus-or-real-deal-superstitions-and-fortune-telling-hong
5. • “In Chinese society, fortune telling is a respected and important part of social and business culture. Thus, fortune tellers often take on a role which is equivalent to management consultants and psychotherapists in Western society. As management consultants, they advise business people on business and investment decisions. Many major business decisions involve the input of fortune tellers.”
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_fortune_telling
6. • “Another matter which deeply concerned the Chinese was the siting of graves, for it was believed that it was possible to site a tomb in relation to the conformation of the land and the vicinity of watercourses, in such a way that a mysterious fecundity was drawn from the earth and transmitted to the descendants of the deceased. The science of discovering suitable sites was known as feng-shui (wind and water), and people who could afford it would employ expert geomancers to seek the most propitious sites for their family graveyards.” [Dawson 78:153]
• On the grave importance for Chinese of superstitiously selecting the ‘right’ time and site for burials, particluarly of royal family members, see [Huff 11:98-103].
• Feng Shui hocus pocus remains prevalent in China today. Articles:
Feng Shui
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feng_shui
Chinese Superstitions and Real Estate in Calgary (Feng Shui)
• bestcalgaryhomes.com/chinese-superstitions-real-estate-calgary
How to Have Good Luck
• feng-shui.lovetoknow.com/how-have-good-luck
• “Of course, when it comes to ancient Chinese beliefs and superstitions, we can’t forget about feng shui. This system uses the laws of Heaven and Earth to improve your life. Chinese take their feng shui very seriously, and one’s home or office needs to be arranged in the correct manner to bring about positive qi which will lead to happiness and success in life.”
• blogs.transparent.com/chinese/very-superstitious/
• “Having your home face in the right direction is important for many Chinese people, even in the modern day. I have witnessed potential house hunters check the direction with a compass to make sure the Feng Shui of the apartment is good. For good Feng Shui, Houses or apartments should NOT face to the north. However, there also seems to be some connection between the homeowners zodiac and which direction their home should face. The direction of your home is also practical; if your home faces the south, you will have more sun during the winter. Bearing in mind, Chinese houses and apartments do not have heating, this is very much needed!
Even city planning is based on Feng Shui: buildings built near mountains often have a hole cut out of them, to allow the ‘dragon’ to flow down the mountain and through the building, allowing for good Feng Shui.”
• www.writtenchinese.com/chinese-superstitions-numbers-cultural-no-nos/
————
E. Superstition even pervades Chinese medicine.
When someone gets sick, Judeo-Christian Whites may close their eyes and beg Yahweh to help, but that is the extent of their hopes for magical intervention. The Chinese, along with appeals to their gods, developed a whole system of quackery to handle the sick, called Traditional Chinese Medicine, which remains popular today. TCM is based on Yin-Yang, the Five Elements, Meridian channels that transport qi energy through the body, and other sorts of hocus pocus [1]. A TCM diagnosis is made by examining the face and tongue, parts of which ‘correspond’ to body organs via the qi channels, as well as pulse-points, odors, and other superficial signs [2]. Emotions similarly correspond to body parts [3]. The prescription will be a random concoction of exotic plant and animal parts, nearly all of them ineffectual and some toxic [4]. Acupuncture, also based on qi energy channels, gets a lot of positive Leftist press, but studies find it no more effective in reducing pain than placebo [5]. Chinese tend to regard physical deformities and psychological problems as forms of supernatural punishment, and tend to fear and avoid afflicted persons [6].
1. • “A recent synthetic study of Chinese science during the seventeenth century notes that the Chinese knew little of the new medical advances in Europe and consequently focused on recovering and renewing the ancient Chinese medical classics. According to this account, the Chinese used “general assumptions about the application of yin-yang, the five phases, and the system of circulation tracts (jingluo) to understand the human body and its susceptibility to illness.” But this was not accompanied by the kind of anatomical or miscroscopical study widely practiced in Europe. The treatises that the Chinese possessed enabled doctors to map acupuncture and moxibustion points on the skin following the belief that qi (energy) flows through various channels of the body. Illness was defined as an imbalance of such forces throughout the body. Yet, “they did not distinguish between the pulse and palpitations associated with the nervous system as Greek physicians had done since Herophilus.” This suggests that the Chinese lacked the anatomical sophistication that Europeans had acquired during centuries of empirical study while performing human postmortems, extending from the late medieval to the early modern period.” [Huff 11:207]
• “They give a description of TCM philosophy, breaking it down into three components. The first is yin-yang:
According to the theory of yin–yang, all opposite matters in the universe, which are interrelated with each other or two opposite aspects within one matter, can be defined as yin or yang.
This is a “push-pull” philosophy of health – but it is just that, a philosophy. Nothing has been discovered in physiology that correlates with yin-yang, that would lead to the prediction that a yin-yang systems exists, or supports the existence or effects of yin-yang. It is just a made-up notion without any basis in physical reality – just like the balancing of the four humors of Galenic medicine…
Next is the five phases:
The five phases theory defines the nature of matters based on the related characteristics of wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. The five phases maintain the generation and restriction relationship among them. TCM uses five phase theory to describe the relationship between five zang and their physiological function, five zang and structure and function of various parts of the human body, and also the correlation between each part of human body and nature and society.
Your liver, apparently, has the aspect of wood. This is an elaborate belief system, just like astrology, and has as much validity. It is rather poetic, also like astrology, and one can understand how a pre-scientific society would develop such ideas in order to attempt to understand something as complex and mysterious as the human body and illness…
Finally there is the visceral and meridian theories, which constitute an alternate (meaning incorrect) way of understanding the organs of the body:
Also, combining visceral manifestation theory with yin–yang and five phase theory, TCM has formed its own understanding towards the law of physiological and pathological changes of the human body. For instance, the liver matches wood, and the spleen belongs to earth. The over-acting of wood will lead to over-restraining on earth. Thus, we can see patients with transverse invasion of the stagnated liver-qi attacking the spleen.
How exactly does stagnated liver-qi attack the spleen? How would this be diagnosed?…
Finally they describe the meridians:
The meridians transport qi and blood all over the body, link up the upper and the lower, the inside and the surface of the human body, response and conduct the information.
Except, there is no evidence that the meridians actually exist. At the risk of sounding redundant, they are as made up and fictional as the ether, flogistum, Bigfoot, and unicorns…”
What Is Traditional Chinese Medicine?, by Steven Novella.
• sciencebasedmedicine.org/what-is-traditional-chinese-medicine/
• “The primary metaphysical belief running through all aspects of TCM is the notion of qi (“chee”), a life-force or vital energy that flows through everything. In the West, the related concept of vitalism was once popular, but was abandoned by Western medicine as it became more science-based… Science-based medicine does not recognize qi or any other form of subtle energy because there is no convincing empirical evidence that such energy exists. Nor is there any evidence for the alleged meridians or channels in the body where qi flows and can become blocked or Chinese tongueunblocked or unbalanced in yin or yang, imaginary primal cosmic principles of the universe. Blockage and imbalance allegedly cause ill health, while various herbs and animal parts allegedly keep qi flowing healthily. Acupuncture and acupressure (placing physical pressure on acupuncture points) supposedly unblocks passages in meridians, allowing qi to flow freely and restore health.”
Traditional Chinese Medicine.
• skepdic.com/tcm.html
2. • “The tongue supposedly is connected to the body’s organs via meridians, allowing diagnosis of internal organ problems by examining various parts of the tongue. There is no scientific basis for any of these notions, all of which were introduced during pre-scientific times.”
Traditional Chinese Medicine.
• skepdic.com/tcm.html
• Tongue Diagnosis in Chinese Medicine.
• www.sacredlotus.com/go/diagnosis-chinese-medicine/get/tongue-diagnosis-chinese-medicine
3. • “The Chinese consider only severe disturbances such as pychosis to be diseases while they view other disturbances as departures from the body’s optiumum normal balance. They believe that emotions are affected by the functioning of specific bodily organs, as follows:
happiness — heart anger — liver
worry — lungs fear — kidneys desire — spleen
They therefore believe that disorders associated with these five primary emotions can best be redressed by restoring normal functioning in the corresponding organ, through physiological interventions such as medicine, diet, exercise, acupuncture, and activity changes. Elaborate theories and contending schools have arisen to support these bodily approaches to the causes of disease.” [Bond 91:92]
4. • “The shark’s fins, ginseng, birds’ nests, pigeon livers and many other delicacies favored by prosperous Chinese are eaten in the belief they aphrodisiacs.” [Townsend 33:45]
• “[To] the Chinese way of thinking, warm water is the cure for just about everything. By extension, cold water, and cold beverages in general, are to be avoided as they might adversely affect your health. This is widely believed, even by educated people. An influential nonprofit organization in Taiwan recently warned against “addiction(s) to cold bottled drinks on hot days.” A doctor at the Taipei City Hospital supported the announcement by adding that although “gulping icy drinks probably cools people down and delights them,” it could cause skin rashes, black eyes, nasal problems, diarrhea, and an ominous-sounding condition called dydroncus, which, it turns out, doesn’t exist.” [Parfitt 12:278]
• Articles:
List of traditional Chinese medicines.
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_traditional_Chinese_medicines
From tiger paws to bear testicles, the bizarre animal parts on sale in China’s ‘medicine markets’ where the more endangered a species is, the more healing qualities it is believed to have.
• www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3021541/From-crocodile-jaws-bear-testicles-bizarre-animal-parts-sale-China-s-medicine-markets-endangered-species-healing-qualities-believed-have.html
How “Traditional Chinese Medicine” Is Pushing Species to Extinction.
• www.dailykos.com/story/2016/4/14/1508394/-How-Traditional-Chinese-Medicine-Is-Pushing-Species-to-Extinction
Traditional Chinese Medicine and Endangered Animals.
• advocacy.britannica.com/blog/advocacy/2007/10/traditional-chinese-medicine-and-endangered-animals/
Traditional Chinese Medical Authorities Are Unable to Stop the Booming Trade in Rare Animal Parts.
• time.com/4578166/traditional-chinese-medicine-tcm-conservation-animals-tiger-pangolin/
China defends use of wild animals in traditional medicine.
• www.reuters.com/article/us-china-endangered-idUSKCN0ZI0GB
Extinction By Traditional Chinese Medicine – An Environmental Disaster.
• www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2014/08/08/extinction-by-traditional-chinese-medicine-an-environmental-disaster/#26fb36b35bd3
5. • “There is, of course, no evidence that acupuncture or moxibustion alters the course of any disease. You have to believe in the notions of qi etc. described above to believe that there is any plausibility to the use of acupuncture for disease. Even for symptomatic treatment (the bulk of scientific acupuncture studies) the evidence is weak to negative.”
What Is Traditional Chinese Medicine?, by Steven Novella.
• sciencebasedmedicine.org/what-is-traditional-chinese-medicine/
• “It should interest the impartial reader that large multicenter clinical trials conducted in Germany (Linde et al., 2005; Melchart et, 2005; Haake et al, 2007, Witt et al, 2005) and in the United States {Cherkin et al, 2009) have found that acupuncture with real needles and sham acupuncture treatments have the same effect on pain levels across multiple chronic pain disorders: migraine, tension headache, low back pain, and osteoarthritis of the knee. The bottom line is: acupuncture is placebo medicine.
I have examined elsewhere the claim that there is scientific evidence supporting the efficacy of acupuncture as a medical treatment, especially for the relief of pain. My conclusion is that the effects of acupuncture reported both in medical journals and anecdotally are due to the natural resolution of the pain or complaint, classical conditioning, expectation effects, calming effects of relaxation, the confidence-boosting theatricals accompanying treatment, and the power of suggestion. Acupuncture is, in brief, placebo medicine on par with the practices of ancient and modern shamans. Studies employing sham acupuncture clearly show that the effects are not due to needles piercing the skin. True believers maintain that acupressure is just acupuncture without piercing the skin and it works just as well. I agree. Acupressure and acupuncture work equally well and both are forms of placebo medicine, which does not mean, by the way, that the effects are “all in the head.”
Traditional Chinese Medicine.
• skepdic.com/tcm.html
• “A small excess of positive results after thousands of trials is most consistent with an inactive intervention. The small excess is predicted by poor study design and publication bias. Further, Simmons et al (2011) demonstrated that exploitation of “undisclosed flexibility in data collection and analysis” can produce statistically positive results even from a completely nonexistent effect. With acupuncture in particular there is documented profound bias among proponents (Vickers et al., 1998). Existing studies are also contaminated by variables other than acupuncture – such as the frequent inclusion of “electroacupuncture” which is essentially transdermal electrical nerve stimulation masquerading as acupuncture.
The best controlled studies show a clear pattern – with acupuncture the outcome does not depend on needle location or even needle insertion. Since these variables are what define “acupuncture” the only sensible conclusion is that acupuncture does not work. Everything else is the expected noise of clinical trials, and this noise seems particularly high with acupuncture research. The most parsimonious conclusion is that with acupuncture there is no signal, only noise.” Acupuncture is a theatrical placebo.” [Colquhoun 13]
• Other scholarly articles:
Acupuncture: Nonsense with Needles. [Taub 93]
Acupuncture Is All Placebo and Here Is Why. [McGeeney 15]
More evidence to show that acupuncture is a ‘theatrical placebo’. [Ernst 14]
6. • “[W]hen Chinese are asked to assess the various causes of psychological problems, they group causes in terms of their impact on the nervous system, with a hostile working environment being equally as important as genetic weakness, and disturbances by supernatural beings accorded accorded the same role as malignant bacteria…
Traditional medical writings rarely discussed more severe forms of incapacity, like psychosis and mental retardation. These forms of abnormality went beyond ‘the psychopathology of everyday life’, and were a matter of some mystery as, indeed, they are everywhere. These abnormalities were a source of shame, as they were often construed as a form of supernatural punishment. Families confined their afflicted relatives to the home and made no attempts to obtain treatment for them. Even today, considerable fear, suspicion, and hostility is directed toward such persons in Chinese communities. Attempts to integrate them into residential areas through ‘half-way’ housing schemes meet spirited resistance.” [Bond 91:91-3]
• “[N]ative Chinese have a superstitious dread of maimed or crippled persons. They said she could not safely venture far inland, as among the old-fashioned Chinese a crippled or deformed person’s life could actually be endangered.” [Townsend 33:148]
• “One of the manifestations of Chinese lack of sympathy is their attitude towards those who are in any way physically deformed. According to the popular belief, the lame, the blind, especially those who are blind of but one eye, the deaf, the bald, the cross-eyed, are all persons to be avoided. It appears to be the assumption that since the physical nature is defective, the moral nature must be so likewise. So far as our observation extends, such persons are not treated with cruelty, but they excite very little of that sympathy which in Western lands is so freely and so spontaneously extended. They are looked upon as having been overtaken by a punishment for some secret sin, a theory exactly accordant with that of the ancient Jews.
The person who is so unfortunate as to be branded with some natural defect or some acquired blemish will not go long without being reminded of the fact…” [Smith 94:196-7]
————
F. Chinese take superstitious luck far more seriously than do Whites.
While Whites have a few odd superstitions that only a handful take seriously, such as black cats and the number 13, superstitions and lucky charms are innumerable and taken very seriously in China [1]. Chinese take pains to get lucky #8’s in personal numbers such as phone numbers, addresses, and license plates, and strive equally hard to avoid #4’s. The Beijing Olympics opened on 8/8/08 at 8:08:08pm local time, and many airline route numbers with multiple 8’s are reserved for China [2]. Lucky color red is seen everywhere [3]. The word for fish sounds like the word for surplus, so fish are lucky [4]. Since good luck enters a home or shop through the front door, Chinese sweep inward and remove the dirt out the back [5]. Concerned about how dead relatives are making do, Chinese burn great quantities of ‘ghost money’ (Joss paper) to keep them in cash [6]. Many Chinese still carefully avoid women believed to be witches [7]. Ghosts are widely feared and precautions are taken to avoid them, such as not clipping your nails at night [8]. There are so many taboos on sex (leading to miscarriages, birth defects, etc.) that only about a hundred days of the year are considered auspicious for it [9].
1. • “All the lofty maxims of Confucianism have been wholly ineffective in guarding the Confucianists from fear of the goblins and devils which figure so largely in Taoism. It has often been remarked, and with every appearance of truth, that there is no other civilised nation in existence which is under such bondage to superstition and credulity as the Chinese…” [Smith 94:296]
• “Divination has been a prominent feature of Chinese culture for at least three thousand years. Until recently, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has actively discouraged the practice, but the ‘Open Policy’ inaugurated by the government in 1978 expanded significantly the state’s tolerance of so-called ‘feudal superstitions’. The result has been a flourishing of many types of divination, including not only ‘siting’ or ‘geomancy’ (see fengshui) but also astrology, physiognomy, dream interpretation, spirit-writing, the use of ‘divining blocks’ (beijiao or jiaobei), and various forms of horoscopic numerology, including systems based on the trigrams and hexagrams of the Yijing [Book of Changes]. Traditional almanacs (huangli, lishu, etc.), which not only designate each day of the lunar year as auspicious or inauspicious for certain activities but also include other predictions based on divination techniques, have become increasingly popular…”
• contemporary_chinese_culture.academic.ru/195/divination_and_fortune-telling
• Articles:
Chinese customs, superstitions and traditions.
• us2.mofcom.gov.cn/article/aboutchina/custom/200411/20041100004548.shtml
Very Superstitious.
• blogs.transparent.com/chinese/very-superstitious/
Superstitions for Good Luck.
• feng-shui.lovetoknow.com/Superstitions_for_Good_Luck
Information About Chinese Superstitions.
• www.taiwanese-secrets.com/chinese-superstitions.html
9 Superstitious Taboos in China
• www.hanban.com/chinese-culture/chinese-taboo/superstitious-taboos-in-China.html
Chinese Superstitions.
www.chinatownconnection.com/chinese-superstitions.htm
Chinese Superstitions and Real Estate in Calgary
• bestcalgaryhomes.com/chinese-superstitions-real-estate-calgary
Chinese Superstitions: Numbers and Other Cultural No-Nos
• www.writtenchinese.com/chinese-superstitions-numbers-cultural-no-nos/
2. • Chinese Numerology; Number Eight
(Many examples of how Chinese seek the #8)
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Numerology#Eight
• “The Chinese, like almost all Asian cultures, have many deeply rooted superstitions. DON’T give: clocks, cut flowers, umbrellas, or cutting implements. The number “4” (which sounds like the word for death) is also unlucky. On the other hand, “8” is considered lucky (it’s no coincidence that the Olympic opening ceremony was on August, 8, 2008).”
• www.china-mike.com/china-travel-tips/chinese-etiquette-tips/
• “Certain numbers are considered lucky, and others unlucky. The luckiest number in Chinese culture is eight, as the Chinese for eight sounds like the word for ‘lucky’. Four, conversely is a very unlucky number as in Chinese it sounds like the word for death. Thus Chinese adhering to the customs try to avoid the number four in, for example, car number plates, house addresses etc.”
• us2.mofcom.gov.cn/article/aboutchina/custom/200411/20041100004548.shtml
• “In China, the number four is extremely unlucky (bu xing de). This is because the pronunciation of four (si) sounds similar to the Chinese word for death (si). Therefore, many people choose to avoid the number four like the plague. It’s not uncommon to step into an elevator in China and notice that there’s no button for the 4th floor, or the 13th or 14th floor, for that matter…
When it comes to good luck, the magic number in China is eight. This is because eight (ba) sounds sort of similar to the word for prosperity/wealth (fa). Do you remember the Beijing Olympics and its grand opening ceremony? Of course you do! Well, it’s no coincidence that the games commenced at 8:08 PM on August 8th, 2008 (8/8/08). Starting the games at this time was meant to bring good luck (hao yun). Yeah, the Chinese take their numerical superstitions that seriously.”
• blogs.transparent.com/chinese/very-superstitious/
3. • “Red, being the colour of blood, symbolises the positive aspects of life such as happiness, wealth, fame etc. Red is always associated with good luck.”
• us2.mofcom.gov.cn/article/aboutchina/custom/200411/20041100004548.shtml
• “As far as good luck goes, it doesn’t get much better than the color red (hong se) in China. It’s the color of the flag, and it represents happiness. During weddings or festivals, you’ll see red everywhere you go. In particular, during the Spring Festival, children will be given a red envelope (hong bao) full of money as a good luck present. As it is the color of blood, red is associated with life. In traditional Chinese wedding ceremonies, the bride would wear a red dress.”
• blogs.transparent.com/chinese/very-superstitious/
4. • “[Chinese] words that sound similar are often taken to have superstitiously similar meanings. For example, the words for “surplus” and “fish” are both pronounced yu, so fish are seen to bring prosperity.”
• “During the Spring Festival celebration, or Chinese New Year as it is known in the West, there are countless superstitions one must pay attention to… [S]ome of the highlights include… eating fish, as fish (yu) has the same pronunciation as the word for surplus (yu).”
• blogs.transparent.com/chinese/very-superstitious/
• “Many people also abstain from eating meat on the first day of Chinese New Year because it is believed that this will ensure a long and happy life. Some may eat a whole fish, that represents togetherness and abundance, or a chicken with its head and feet intact, which symbolizes prosperity.”
www.chinatownconnection.com/chinese-superstitions.htm
• “Similarly, in my family (as with most other Chinese families) it is customary to serve a fish whole (yes, that means with the eye intact). The word for fish, yu, sounds like the word for abundance. Eating fish in this way is thought to help your wishes come true.”
• spoonuniversity.com/lifestyle/21-asian-food-superstitions-everyone-should-know
5. • “How you sweep your home is very important. You can hold on to the good luck that enters your door by proper sweeping. When you sweep your home, you should sweep inwardly. You need to sweep all the dirt and dust into the center of your home and then physically carry it out of the house through the back door, never the front door. This keeps the good luck in your home.”
• feng-shui.lovetoknow.com/Superstitions_for_Good_Luck
• “In China, people must never make use of the broom to brush outwards in the front of the shop. The person ought to often sweep inwards from principal doorway and then progressively operate your method to the back of the store. This pulls within the luck. It is a fact that the front of the house is the place with great luck enters as well as the back the house is where poor luck leaves.”
• www.hanban.com/chinese-culture/chinese-taboo/superstitious-taboos-in-China.html
• “Beginning at the door, the dust and rubbish are swept to the middle of the parlor, then placed in the corners and not taken or thrown out until the fifth day. At no time should the rubbish in the corners be trampled upon. In sweeping, there is a superstition that if you sweep the dirt out over the threshold, you will sweep one of the family members away. Also, to sweep the dust and dirt out of your house by the front entrance is to sweep away the good fortune of the family; it must always be swept inwards and then carried out, then no harm will follow. All dirt and rubbish must be taken out the back door.”
www.chinatownconnection.com/chinese-superstitions.htm
• “Homes with a back door directly in line with the front door are bad luck. They are believed to have Chi come in only to have it go straight out the back door. Chinese superstitious want Chi to come into their homes, stay, and circulate throughout. The more positive energy, the better.”
• bestcalgaryhomes.com/chinese-superstitions-real-estate-calgary
6. • “[T]he rites which took place at a person’s death had two other distinct purposes—to ward off the evil influences associated with the dreadfulness of death itself, and to see to the welfare of the departed in the next world. To secure the well-being of the deceased, the first act was to report the event to the appropriate authority in the underworld, just as births and marriages had to be reported to ancestors. Reporting the event to the appropriate god, which varied according to local tradition, facilitated the admittance of the departed into the spirit world.
The next important task was to equip the departed for his sojourn in the other world, by dressing him in fine clothes, placing useful articles in his coffin, and filling his mouth with gold, silver, pearls, or other precious objects…” [Dawson 78:151-2]
• “Mourners assist by burning joss paper. Also called “ghost money”, this practice helps to “buy” the deceased’s escape from hell, which is “a “highly corrupt place”, says Ng Yiu-tong, permanent chairman of the Hong Kong Funeral Business Association and owner of Kam Fook Shau Funeral, also in Hung Hom. His family have been in the funeral business for more than 50 years.
Other joss paper offerings, such as houses, servants and garments, are burned to symbolically provide the departed with a place to live, clothing to wear and people to take care of them in the underworld.
They also serve as a “golden key” to a more prosperous afterlife. “If the dead possess more houses, servants, clothes and money, it’ll be easier for them to meet other dead souls with a similarly wealthy background and be accepted into their circle for an affluent rebirth,” Ng says.” [Ng 17]
• Joss paper: Ghost money burned for deceased
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joss_paper
• “On the first and fifteenth day of every lunar month, and during the entire seventh lunar month, or “Ghost Month”, the Taiwanese burn ghost money in stainless steel furnaces and canisters in order to appease the deceased. My apartment building even has a designated burning area…
Businesses burn ghost money, too, in addition to laying tables out with edible offereings… On the designated days, you can see sharply dressed opticians and real-estate agents feeding bundles of gold-and-crimson paper into smoke-billowing sidewalk containers. Schoolchildren trundle through carcinogenic clouds while vendors sell cllothes and fresh food just metres away.” [Parfitt 12:348]
• “During the Ghost Festival, which spans an entire lunar month starting in August, paper offerings are burned nearly every day. Estimates for the total amount of joss paper burned each year in Taiwan ranges from 90,000 to 220,000 tons. Similarly, on the seemingly random auspicious days dotted throughout the year, firecrackers and “ghost money” are often burned in the streets. Many smaller privately-owned businesses burn money on the first and fifteenth day of every month!”
Taiwanese people have ‘ghost money’ to burn
• www.chinapost.com.tw/editorial/taiwan-issues/2011/03/31/296663/p2/taiwanese-people.htm
7. • “Belief in witches runs rampant in some rural Chinese communities, a new study shows – and those who are accused of witchcraft are having to band together to survive.
In one rural farming community in southwestern China, 13.7 per cent of the population have been labelled “zhu,” or “witches,” by their neighbours, according to a new paper published on January 8 in Nature Human Behaviour.
“Zhu households are believed to raise snakes, and poison people by providing them polluted food or simply by eye contact,” said Ting Ji, an anthropologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences who worked on the study.”
Chinese ‘witches’ band together after rural communities ostracise them
• www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2128393/witches-are-banding-together-after-rural-chinese-communities
• “Here we show a case from a farming community in China where people labelled zhu were thought capable of supernatural activity, particularly poisoning food. The label was usually applied to adult women heads of household and often inherited down the female line. We found that those in zhu households were less likely to give or receive gifts or farm help to or from non-zhu households; nor did they have sexual partnerships or children with those in non-zhu households.” [Mace 18]
• “In rural China, such persons – mostly adult women – are called “zhu.” The negative label, often linked with poisoning food or water and other supernatural abilities, is used to cast aside some families to the benefit of others…
They realised that not only were “zhu” families excluded by the rest of the villages, they themselves only socialised with other people labelled as “zhu.” In gift exchanges prompted by the scientists, zhu would not give nor receive any presents with non-zhu families…
The study also indicates that while excluded, witches in a community are tolerated for specific reasons, mainly that their suspected powers could be useful in times of conflict against outsiders and locals will go to them to defend the community against enemies.”
Zhu families: The Chinese villages where women are labelled witches and ostracised from society
• www.ibtimes.co.uk/zhu-families-chinese-villages-where-women-are-labelled-witches-ostracised-society-1654223
8. • “China is a country which abounds in wild rumours, often of a character to fill the heart with dread. Within the past few years such a state of things has been reported among the Chinese in Singapore that coolies positively refused to travel a certain street after dark, on account of the imminent danger of having their heads suddenly and mysteriously cut off.” [Smith 94:264]
• “The living are not immune to malignant spirits, and astrological beliefs play a role in safeguarding mourners. If a guest’s Chinese zodiac sign clashes with that of the deceased, Ng says, they risk their souls being “dragged” into the coffin – either when the corpse is moved from the morgue into the coffin, or when the lid of the coffin is covered prior to the burial or cremation. In both cases, guests with conflicting astrological signs are advised to turn their heads away, or even leave the funeral hall.” [Ng 17]
• “Chinese custom forbids the clipping of one’s toe or finger nails at night as it is believed that this may cause a visit from the dead or a ghost. Nail clippings are to be carefully collected and disposed of in a place unknown to others as it is believed that nail clippings can be used to cast a spell or curse upon the person from whom the clippings have come.
Dogs are believed to have the ability to see supernatural beings such as ghosts and phantoms, and howl when they see one. If a dog howls continuously, it is believed that this presages an imminent death.”
• us2.mofcom.gov.cn/article/aboutchina/custom/200411/20041100004548.shtml
• “Other Chinese superstitions about ghosts include:
Don’t whistle at night because it attracts ghosts.
Don’t hang your clothes outside at night because it looks like flying ghosts.
Don’t swim in lakes or in the ocean during the Chinese Ghost Month because ghosts will drown you.
When you enter your hotel room, knock first to let the ghosts know you’re coming in.”
• www.taiwanese-secrets.com/chinese-superstitions.html
9. • “Eberhard analyzed a considerable number of popular moral tracts (shan shu, lit. “good writings”), most of them modern (nineteenth and twentieth centuries), but in one case going back to a Buddhist tract in the sixth century. The influence of Buddhism in these writings is of course very strong, but Taoist and Confucian writings are also conspicuous, the later increasingly so in the more recent tracts. The tracts stress the uncleanliness of body functions and of sex and prescribe so many taboos on the latter that according to Eberhard’s calculation, only some hundred days in the year were recognized as auspicious for sex relations. Eberhard’s conclusion is:
‘If one had to keep all these rules constantly in mind and had to be afraid that in any case of violation either his health would be destroyed, or miscarriages would occur, or children with bad character qualities would be born, or the deities would be offended and mete out punishments, Chinese sex life could not have been very “natural” and sexual inhibitions and fears must have been quite strong from fairly early medieval times down to the present.'” [Bodde 91:276]
————
IV-7. Gambling and carelessness.
Similarly as the Chinese optimistically ignore doubts with respect to superstition, they are optimistic with respect to gambling and careless regarding dangers involved with normal activities such as driving.
A. Chinese gambling and superstition are intertwined.
Chinese have an optimism for gambling that is similar their optimistic use of good luck charms; undoubtedly they go together. Similarly as Chinese tend to disregard general experiences that contradict superstitious claims, they tend to disregard general experiences with gambling that indicate their next venture will more likely than not be a losing one. Each new gambling venture is regarded a unique event; former misfortunes and principles of chance being inapplicable to it. Since their last losing outing, they have made new offerings to deities, have taken new auspicious actions or brought along new lucky charms, and have paid due attention to the present ‘winning patterns’ in the games. Whites are more inclined to regard such contextual details as irrelevant and are more conscious of the underlying laws of probability [1] (section III-2.D).
1. • On the Chinese being weaker at discrimination and expression of uncertainty, see the [Bond 86:53-4] citation in section IV-5.B.
————
B. Chinese are more reckless gamblers than Whites.
For average players, gambling is a foolish, losing venture. The house has an advantage, and any opposing players are more skilled or better cheaters. The Chinese, strong believers in superstitious luck, not surprisingly are enthusiastic gamblers. Some of their superstitious beliefs in luck of course pertain to gambling [1]. They are passionate gamblers historically [2], and studies show that Chinese-Americans have a 6-20% rate of pathological gambling against the national rate of 1-2% [3]. Chinese are greatly overrepresented as clientele of casinos, and eagerly sought by them [4]. The communist regime in China outlawed most forms of gambling, but nevertheless underground games as well as casinos in neighboring nations are a huge and booming business [5].
1. • “The gap between divination and gambling was blurred. For some gamblers, gambling may well have been experienced as an attempt to make contact with hidden numinous powers, and to persuade them to bestow their favors. The same Chinese word, bu, could be used to cover both practices…
Among the ordinary people the irrational religion of luck exerted an almost irresistible oppression. ‘Colored-Cards Meetings’ (huahui) are an example…
Such belief in the possible intervention of the spirit world [evinced in a story about a widow’s dead husband helping her to win at huahui] made the study of probability irrelevant.” [Elvin 10:18-21]
• “This strong belief in luck, fate, or fortune is part of the driving force behind Asians and gambling. It’s no coincidence there is such a high proportion of Asians gambling and the deep cultural factors which not only encourage gambling but discourage seeking help when it becomes compulsive or addictive…
Another significant role is the emphasis and high regard Asian cultures place on superstition, numerology, and the notion of “luck” compared to Western culture. As a result, winning or losing carries a much heavier sense of identification as it can be perceived as a reflection on self. “Asians also promote themes of good fortune, are superstitious, and feel that fate is predetermined by the ancestors, i.e., a person who is ‘lucky’ in gambling is considered to be blessed from the gods.” (Dr. Tim Fong)” [Louie 14]
• “Chinese people believe that luck, destiny, chance and powerful others control their lives more than themselves. An external locus of control can potentially lead to higher illusion of control on the gaming table. Superstition aggravates illusion of control. Chinese people’s unique form of superstition on lucky/unlucky objects, feng shui and numbers has added to their high illusion of control… High illusion of control may then lead to high risk-taking and/or more gambling.”
Unlocking the World of Chinese Gambling
• ggbmagazine.com/article/unlocking-the-world-of-chinese-gambling/
• “Chinese superstitions can be prevalent within Asian gambling culture. For example, baccarat players in Macau believe that even the manner in which cards are squeezed or creased can determine the outcome of a game…
Chinese players will often obsessively looks for patterns or trends in a game.
If a player wins 3 times in a row, they will bet on the player winning a fourth time.
If a player starts to lose, they will bet against him to improve their chances.
Players can often be seen studying other tables looking for these patterns.
If you hit an unlucky streak, the Chinese believe it is best to go and wash your hands and so wash away your bad luck. Some even carry their own lucky soaps for this very purpose.
Conversely, it is considered bad luck to wash your hands whilst winning, as this will wash away good luck.”
5 Odd Chinese Superstitions Which May Just Bring You Luck
• www.les-croupiers.co.uk/5-odd-chinese-superstitions-which-may-just-bring-you-luck/
• “Many Chinese gamblers are into feng shui. The west side of a room (or casino), for example, or somewhere you can see a door, are considered good luck based upon this ancient philosophy.
A famous example of the importance of feng shui to gamblers is when the MGM Grand had to change its entrance, one that formerly forced customers to walk through the mouth of a lion, deemed to be very bad mojo by players from Asia…
Chinese males believe having sex before gambling is bad luck, so it’s to be avoided at all costs…
In the Chinese culture, it’s considered especially good luck if a woman gambles during her period.”
Eight Fascinating Chinese Gambling Superstitions
• vitalvegas.com/eight-fascinating-chinese-gambling-superstitions/
2. • “Another source of repetitive numerical patterns was gambling, and gambling was a Chinese passion from early times. Many games depended on insight, psychology, and skill in addition to luck, but a few could be played more effectively on the foundation of relatively simple probabilistic analysis [which China evidently lacked].” [Elvin 10:18]
• “As in all places where there are Chinese, in Shanghai every sort of gambling joint is accessible. Race track betting is legal, and horse racing has the largest following of any sport.” [Townsend 33:11]
; “It is little wonder, accordingly, that the Chinese are such frenzied gamblers, setting aside for the moment other considerations in their character that probably tend to make them so. Through many centuries there has been very little opportunity in China for safety in investments.” [14]
; “[Chinese] are famed for their prudence in money matters, yet their love of gambling amounts to such an insane passion that every year millions are ruined to become beggars or suicides.” [48]
; “Elsewhere, among his varied experiences [in early 19th century China], [Abbe] Huc had occasion to note the evils of gambling, and the intensities of passion aroused in Chinese by games of betting. In one place at the time he visited it, a city up near the Great Wall, he says, where the winters are very cold an unusually frenzied epidemic of gambling gripped the populace. Desperate players, having a run of ill luck, would begin to wager one personal possession after another, finally getting down to the clothes they wore. If his fortune was still bad, the winners would promptly strip these from the loser, then the bouncers would drag the unlucky wretch to the door and heave him out into the snow. The winning players, watching from the door for a moment the fellow’s agonized running about to seek warmth before he succumbed to the deadly cold and curled up in the snow to freeze, would then go on with the game. Huc relates also that the gambling halls there at that time commonly kept on the tables a hatchet, a block, and a bowl of hot oil. This was for the particularly passionate fans who would in desperation wager a finger.” [58-9]
• “It is not hard to figure out why Chinese are known around the world for their high aptitude to gamble. You just need to look back through time and will quickly realize that the Chinese people have a long-documented history of gambling. The first record of gambling can be traced back to the first dynasty some 4,000 years ago. Gambling was recorded in every dynasty since then. In fact, many modern games like lottery, pai gow, tien gow, fan tan and mahjong are thought to have originated in China.
From the middle of the 1800s to the early 1900s, Shanghai was a magnet that attracted many Chinese gamblers. They played a variety of local and foreign games including roulette in its large gambling complexes. These establishments could be found in the Shanghai International Settlement and Shanghai French Concession.”
Unlocking the World of Chinese Gambling.
• ggbmagazine.com/article/unlocking-the-world-of-chinese-gambling/
3. • “AAPI [Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders] have had a long history of accepting gambling as a community and family recreational activity. Recent national prevalence surveys of the general population have shown rates of pathological gambling to be around 1 to 2 percent. Other surveys conducted specifically on AAPI communities have resulted in varying numbers. A 1997 community survey conducted by the San Francisco NICOS Chinese Health Coalition and two UC Berkeley graduate students found that 14.7 percent of Chinese subjects identified themselves as problem gamblers, and 21 percent met the criteria for pathological gambling.” [Fong 07]
; “Among Asians, there have been a few studies all signaling an increased prevalence of pathological gambling, with a range from 6 to 10 percent, depending on the populations being examined.” [Fong 05]
• “Research shows Asians in the U.S. have a disproportionate number of pathological gamblers (i.e. addicted) as compared to the general American population. According to Dr. Timothy Fong, an associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA and co-director of the UCLA Gambling Studies Program, the rate of gambling addiction ranges from 6 percent to nearly 60 percent, depending on the specific Asian ethnicity (Southeast Asian refugees scoring highest) as opposed to the national rate of 1-2%.” [Louie 14]
4. • “[C]asinos in the U.S. have capitalized on this by marketing aggressively to Asians, especially Asian immigrants by offering Asian entertainers, ethnic food, free transportation and even card dealers who speak Asian languages. At the Commerce Casino outside Los Angeles, there are estimates Asians make up 80-90 percent of the clientele. In Connecticut, the Foxwoods Casino has a version of its website written in both Chinese and Vietnamese.” [Louie 14]
5. • “Ma Honggang was once a legend in the secretive, twilight world of China’s high-stakes gamblers…
Now he has embarked on a different career: persuading China’s growing army of illegal gamblers to think again about what to many has become a destructive addiction…
Even more remarkable, however, is that there was never a shortage of punters for Mr Ma to trick. For, despite the fact that gambling has been outlawed on the Chinese mainland since the Communist Party took power in 1949, today it is more widespread than ever before.
Rising incomes have combined with the advent of new ways to gamble, such as foreign internet betting websites, to devastating effect for a nation whose people have long been known for their love of a flutter.
There are just two officially sanctioned lotteries in China. But an estimated one trillion yuan (£900 million) is also wagered illegally each year in China – equal to the entire economic output of Beijing. It is a staggering figure for a country where 700 million people – more than half the population – live in rural areas with an average of just 4,700 yuan (£415) a year.
The gambling takes place in card and mah-jong schools on street corners, in underground casinos in the cities, through unofficial lotteries in the countryside and on hundreds of websites catering to internet gamblers.
Now China is beginning to face up to an awkward problem for its Communist leaders to admit: illegal gambling has spawned huge and increasing numbers of addicts.
“Based on international statistics for countries with developed gaming industries, two or three per cent of gamblers have a problem,” said Wang Xuehong, director of Peking University’s Centre for Lottery Studies, who has made a study of China’s problem gamblers.
“In China it’s more than that, because people are still not rational when it comes to gambling.””
China’s secret gambling problem
• www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/6942975/Chinas-secret-gambling-problem.html
• “Technically illegal in China, there is no doubt the nation loves to gamble. Whether it is over extended games of Mahjong in Chengdu, or sleazy gaming tables in Vegas, if there is a chance to bet, a Chinese won’t be far away. For many that want to gamble, a trip to Hong Kong (horses) or Macau (casinos and greyhounds) is often the order of the day. Or there is always a chance to bet on the national ‘lotteries’.”
• www.theworldofchinese.com/2013/11/the-bets-are-on-for-gambling-in-china/
• “Gambling is illegal in the People’s Republic, but its residents are some of the world’s highest rollers, both domestically, where they wager billions of dollars annually on underground games of chance, and abroad, where over the last decade a growing number of increasingly wealthy Chinese have driven a huge boom in casino construction and profit. Spurred by the success of Macau, the world’s hottest gaming spot, casinos have mushroomed in Singapore, the Philippines, and Australia…
China, where no vice is legal but every vice is tolerated, has a complicated history with gambling. Like opium, it was rife in the early 20th century. Gen. Chiang Kai-shek, the country’s nominal leader in the 1930s and 1940s, saw gambling as a threat to his army’s morale and unsuccessfully tried to curtail it. After Chiang and his supporters made a run for Taiwan and Matsu in 1949, Mao Zedong took power in China and swiftly outlawed gambling, as well as other vices. But in the years following his death in 1976, drugs and prostitution re-emerged, and by the 1980s and 1990s, Chinese people could be found betting on everything from horse racing to soccer matches to cricket fighting.
Today, signs of gambling are nearly ubiquitous in mainland China. Tables for the rummy-like game of mahjong dot street corners around the country, while more serious wagering takes place in parlors that, like Chinese brothels hiding behind foot-massage signs and barber chairs, make little attempt to hide their purpose. “If you don’t play for a profit motive, it’s legal — but if you play to make money, that’s illegal,” explains Chen Haiping, a researcher at Beijing Normal University’s lottery research center. But there are also much, much bigger games: In June, 17 people were indicted in Shanghai for the crime of opening an online casino into which they allegedly funneled $13 billion in bets.”
The Big Bet; Everyone is trying to cash in on China’s gambling addiction.
• foreignpolicy.com/2013/09/03/the-big-bet/
• “The average person in Hong Kong bet more at the racecourse in 1989 than the average person in China earned during the same year. Who knows how much more was wagered legally at the casinos in neighboring Macau, on public lotteries, and in private and illegal games of chance? Behind these awesome figures lie the ruptured lives of many individuals and families, beggared by this addiction. Despite this incalculable pain, there is little public discussion of gambling, scant writing on this topic in Chinese psychology, and almost no treatment resources are devoted to tackling this insidious compulsion.” [Bond 91:91]
————
C. Chinese are more careless generally than Whites.
Chinese are relatively careless with respect to hazards present in everyday activities, comparable to their carelessness with respect to gambling. Carelessness means having a lack of concern for possible if unlikely hazards, which have been experienced only rarely or via report. A concrete-perceiver is less likely to relate such rare incidents to his present situation/activity, being more focused on its particular details and its routine progression (section III-2.D). Note that carelessness is not the same as bravery demonstrated in dangerous activities such as mountain climbing and soldiering, wherein one may be very conscious of hazards and averting them as carefully as possible under difficult circumstances. And since Whites are more aggressive (section II-1) and have a greater explorative and recreative drive than Chinese (section IV-1), they will encounter more adventurous and dangerous situations.
Chinese carelessness has been detailed by astute authors who spent time in China. Charles Townsend characterized the Chinese as “naturally” and “hopelessly” careless [1]. He reported that falling overboard off a boat is “not an infrequent occurrence among Chinese”, and detailed their carelessness in handling sewage pails [2], the slipshod condition of their buildings [3], and their sloppy manner of eating [4]. Troy Parfitt encountered frequent reckless driving in his travels in China [5]. Reckless driving there is in fact well attested [6], and the ‘crazy Asian driver’ stereotype is well established in the United States in spite of Chinese-Americans’ general respect for law enforcement there [7]. Parfitt also finds remarkable Chinese carelessness in creating road hazards [8], in handling fire [9], and in unsafe construction leading to industrial tragedies [10]. He also bore witness to a careless Chinese attitude about smoking cigarettes [11]; it is admitted that 60% of even China’s male doctors are smokers [12]. Arthur Smith in the late 19th century was amazed at Chinese “cheery hopefulness” under difficult circumstances, concluding “it is well for the Chinese that they are gifted with the capacity not to worry” [13].
1. • “Falling overboard, it may be mentioned, is not an infrequent occurrence among Chinese, who are naturally careless. Almost any veteran foreigner who has traveled up and down the rivers of China will be able to recount one or more cases where he has personally observed a man drown without efforts to save him by other Chinese a few feet away on shore or in a boat.” [Townsend 33:54]
; “Chinese are hopelessly careless, and as they fill their pails up to the brim, and provide no covering for them, the cobblestones of the streets over which the caravans pass daily are kept slimy with sewage, from which the playing children, the wandering dogs, and the scavenger hogs are promptly able to track contamination into the homes.” [78]
2. • See the [Townsend 33:54,78] citations, above.
3. • “A sort of moldy desolation, withal surrounded by animation, stares at you everywhere in China. In spite of their industry, in the sense of always puttering about, the Chinese are without doubt the most slipshod people on earth. The common huts are always about to fall to pieces, a not infrequent occurrence. Their roofs leak, and the mud walls are usually cracked and partly knocked to pieces. Mending anything before the imminent danger of its falling upon his head, or upon his livestock (a more important concern), would be unthinkable to a Chinese. Even the premises of the well-to-do are almost invariably in an advanced state of disrepair, though the family has an abundance of money for luxuries.” [Townsend 33:40]
• On the filthy condition of Chinese streets and neighborhoods see Parfitt references in section II-5.B; “Chinese neighborhoods are always the same and yet perpetually dissimilar: their disarray and disorder are forever arrayed and ordered dissimilarly.” [Parfitt 12:52]
4. • “Everybody at the table eats out of a common bowl in the middle. The clashing chop sticks in this greedy melee sound like a competition in typing. Sideswiping and midair collisions come thick and fast even between the most formal and cultured Chinese, and are thought nothing of, so that within a round or two the beautiful embroidered tablecloth, handsomely decorated with flowers, is slopped right and left with fragments of meat and spots of gravy. To make a clean piercing stroke into the middle of the table and snip a morsel between the slippery round sticks requires careful judgment of distance and timing, something like the skill called for in fencing. If you don’t like a mouthful of what you extract, it is all right to spew it out on the floor and try again.” [Townsend 33:45]
5. • Parfitt experienced reckless driving and crashes in China unendingly: [Parfitt 12:114,154,178,185,236,281,316,375-7]
; “Even in Taipei, cars seldom signal, and scooter drivers almost never look before rocketing out of side streets. Scooters sometimes race (occasionally in packs) and often weave in and out of traffic. Because they park on the sidewalks, they have to drive on them. Pedestrians, by contrast, often walk on the roads.
There is little to no respect for pedestrians in Taiwan. As touched upon, right turns on red lights trump walk indicators, even if those walking are children, the elderly, or women with strollers. I don’t know how many times I have seen mothers jerk their prams out of the path of a speeding work truck or taxi; hundreds probably. And it never seems to matter whether intersections have traffic cops or not. There are so many infractions; where would you even start.” [375-6]
; He also witnessed careless pedestrian walking: “I witnessed several pedestrians saunter across the road without the slightest regard for traffic.” [154]
6. • In 2016, the U.S. with its mixed population had 37,461 car crash deaths (1); while China, with about 50% more motor-vehicle drivers (2), had seven times as many road accident deaths–260,000 (3).
1) List of motor vehicle deaths in U.S. by year
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year
2) China Soon to Have Almost as Many Drivers as U.S. Has People
• blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/11/28/china-soon-to-have-almost-as-many-drivers-as-u-s-has-people/
3) WHO:260,000 die in China as a result of road accidents
• www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-05/24/content_25442984.htm
• According to this Wikipedia page, China’s road fatality rate per 100K motor vehicles is 104.5; eight times higher than the U.S. (12.9) and over 15 times higher than most European nations.
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate
7. • Urban Dictionary: Asian Driver
• www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=asian%20driver
• Chinky Or Not Chinky: Are Asians Bad Drivers
• www.yomyomf.com/chinky-or-not-chinky-are-asians-bad-drivers/
• There are of course many articles discussing the ‘bad Asian driver stereotype’, with comments generally concurring with this belief. Most of these articles however claim to refute the “myth” with data that Asians have high valid driver’s license rates, low DUI rates, and low crash death rates. While statistics on “Whites” in the U.S. are always suspect, the gist of these stats for Asians seems clear. Are we then to toss out the evidence of the senses? No.
For one thing, there is no doubt that Chinese behave better in White nations than in their own, as discussed in section II-5.C. New immigrants especially are reluctant to violate the laws of their new country. The more careless nature of Chinese is counteracted by their more timid nature and a greater fear of confrontation with non-Chinese law enforcement and non-Chinese drivers on the road. Also, Chinese drivers likely spend a greater portion of their time on well known routes. On the other side, driving is more of a recreational activity to the more explorative and aggressive Whites, who go on more excursions, drive more in unfamiliar areas at odd times, drink more alcohol, and sometimes even engage in thrill-seeking. This is ‘careless’ behavior, though not for the same reasons as with the Chinese.
8. • Farm workers needlessly block both lanes of traffic- [Parfitt 12:76-7]; Maintenance workers needlessly create a hazard on a road which quickly causes a crash- [74-5]; Various oblivious creation traffic jams- [342].
9. • Many Taiwanese are reckless about burning religious-based fires all over and launching hundreds of lit lanterns and fireworks randomly into the air, causing random fires- [Parfitt 12:348-9].
10. • Parfitt recounts the incompetence of Chinese engineers building a water treatment plant with the assistance of German students, who say they expect the plant will become inoperable after they leave, adding “[N]o one here has the slightest idea what they are doing. All they want to do is cut corners. And this is really amazing because they dump *everything* into the river…[which is horribly dirty].” [Parfitt 12:144-5]
; Of the Three Gorges Dam: “Critics have argued that the dam was poorly planned, having been built atop a geological fault and with a weight that could induce seismic activity. They have also noted that the 660-kilometre-long reservoir created by the barrier has already become extremely polluted—as they predicted…
Another major concern has to do with siltation… Not only are the riverbanks downstream (not to mention the city of Shanghai) dependent on silt, but its accumulation upstream could lead to catastrophe…
In 1975, sedimentation contributed to the failure of the Ru River’s Banqiao Dam. Thought to be indestructable, it tumbled after a typhoon. The upshot was the formation of a 10- to 14-kilometre-long wave, which moved through the countryside at a speed of 14 metres per second while inflicting ineffable devastation. Sixty-one additional dams failed in the disaster, which took the lives of roughly 166,000 people and affected 11 million more. The government did what it could to cover up the debacle; the Banqiao Dam also had critics, and they too were ignored.” [146-7]
; “In the neighboring province of Jilin, a petrochemical plant had exploded causing an 80-kilometre-long toxic slick to pass along the Songhua and through the middle of Haerbin, a city dependent on the river for its power supply… Eventually the government came clean, but only after all the denial, disinformation, and poor decision-making it has become known for. Oddly, when I asked people about the spill, no one claimed to have any knowledge of it. But then, industrial tragedies, largely the result of neglect and corruption, have become commonplace in China’s Northeast.” [181-2]
; “The Great Leap Forward [which was full of gross errors] was no one-off, either. Customarily, employees in Chinese companies are given impossible workloads resulting in copious mistakes and an almost systematic lack of quality. But because mistakes can be used as evidence, they are not reported. Objections or even constructive proposals are infrequent, too, as they can be interpreted as undermining one’s superior. There is even a modern-day analogy for the metal ingots [gathered to a vast extent but totally wasted]. In 2000, Taiwan’s government launched a massive campaign dubbed “the Trash Revolution”. Suddenly, there were recycling bins and notices in every business, school, and apartment block in the country. Six months later, it was discovered that the processing plants weren’t recycling anything.
And this is what gets habitually glossed over in the China analysis: Chinese culture remains locked in a self-replicating state of chaos, myopia, inefficiency, intolerance, violence, and irrationality. It is, in a word, backward.” [170]
11. • Parfitt mentions Chinese heavy smoking habits several times: “The Chinese government is the largest producer of cigarettes in the world and China has the world’s largest number of smoking-related deaths. Nearly three quarters of Chinese men smoke, and a comprehensive survey conducted by both Western and Chinese scientists found that over two thirds of Chinese people believe smoking is all but harmless. Sixty percent believe it doesn’t cause lung cancer while ninety-six percent think it bears no relation to heart disease. I learned this from an article I read from the BBC.” [Parfitt 12:194-5]
12. • “”Many other doctors think smoking is a habit and not an illness, a dependence on nicotine,” he said, adding that nearly 60 percent of male doctors in the country are smokers, the highest in the world.”
Smoke-free list extends to healthcare facilities.
• www.chinadaily.com.cn/life/2009-12/11/content_9161633.htm
13. • “We have come to recognise worry as the bane in our modern life, the rust which corrodes the blade far more than the hardest use can destroy it. It is well for the Chinese that they are gifted with the capacity not to worry, for taking the race as a whole, there are comparatively few who do not have some very practical reason for deep anxiety.” [Smith 94:158]
; “Perhaps it is in time of sickness that the innate cheerfulness of the Chinese disposition shows to most advantage. As a rule, they take the most optimistic view, or, at all events, wish to seem to do so, both of their own condition and of that of others. Their cheery hopefulness often does not forsake them even in physical weakness and in extreme pain. We have known multitudes of cases where Chinese patients, suffering from every variety of disease, frequently in deep poverty, not always adequately nourished, at a distance from their homes, sometimes neglected or even abandoned by their relatives, and with no ray of hope for the future visible, yet maintained a cheerful equanimity of temper, which was a constant albeit an unintentional rebuke to the nervous impatience which, under like circumstances, would be sure to characterise the Anglo-Saxon.” [169]
————
IV-8. Proficiency in memory and skill, and Chinese underachievement.
A. Chinese are more skilled than Whites at all tasks not requiring creativity or power athletics.
Chinese have greater ability than Whites to develop skill at all tasks not dependent on creativity or power athletics. Chinese score higher than Whites on memory tests [1], and are predominant among the world’s top World Memory Championship competitors [2]. Not surprisingly, since for over a millennium the wealth and privileges attendant with Chinese officialdom depended on a strong rote memory for the Civil Service examinations [3]. As discussed in section III-1, memory-based intelligence extends as well to academic and manual skills. Chinese are highly successful at math and science problem-solving competitions [4], and score higher than Whites on Performance-IQ and SAT-Math tests [5]. They are likewise more successful at math and science scholarship and vocations [6]. Chinese also excel at musical instrument-playing [7]. Chinese excel at sports requiring precise technique and timing, such as table tennis and gymnastics. China’s economic success in manufacturing products, including artistic ones, is likely also a consequence of high levels of skill.
1. • “An unambiguous comparison of memory performance may be made if the items to be remembered are of the same type. As in the Peterson and Peterson study (1959) and the Murdock (1961) study, Liu and Ma (1970) used English consonant trigrams as items to be remembered, in order to obtain short-term forgetting curves from Chinese college students. With respect to the identical experimental condition of presenting consonant trigrams only once, Liu and Ma obtained more than 20 per cent recall from Chinese subjects at the retention interval of 27 seconds. Peterson and Peterson and Murdock, however, obtained less than 30 per cent recall from Western subjects at the retention interval of 18 seconds. The Western subjects, with the retention interval of 18 seconds, had an advantage over the Chinese subjects, with the retention interval of 27 seconds. Yet the former subjects recalled less than the latter subjects. Since the subjects of the Liu and Ma study memorized English consonant trigrams, they were at a further disadvantage. The Chinese subjects seemed to capitalize on their required rehearsal skill (Rule 6) to transfer more items to long-term memory during the exposure time of items, because the flat part of a short-term memory retention curve (including 18-second and 27-second intervals) signifies the number of items transferred to long-term memory.
The author has spent many years conducting verbal memory retention research with Chinese subjects. The memory ability of Chinese subjects is usually superior to that reported in the American literature. For example, a typical textbook of learning (Hulse, Deese, and Egeth, 1975, p.320) states that from 8 to 20 pairs may constitute a paired-associate list. However, with a list consisting of 20 pairs or fewer, Chinese college students usually attain the criterion of perfect recall within two or three trials. In the Huang and Liu study (1978), a list consisting of 24 pairs of two-character words was used. It was found that second-year college students attained 95 per cent correct responses on the third study-recall trial. On the other hand, for instance, Paivio (1965) used a paired-associate list consisting of 16 pairs of English nouns. The nouns were those with frequencies of 50 or more occurrences per million, according to Thorndike and Lorge (1944). He found that the mean total numbers of correct responses on four trials were between 6 and 11 for various groups of subjects. These figures are comparatively low, because the mean total numbers of correct responses on the first trial alone were between 6 and 12 for various groups in the Huang and Liu study.” [Bond 86:89-90]
• “On rote memory tests both Chinese boys and girls scored more highly than whites at most ages…” [Vernon 82]
2. • World Memory Championships; Official World Rankings.
• www.world-memory-statistics.com/worldrankings.php
3. • See section IV-5.B and its sources.
4. • 2017 Raytheon Mathcounts National Competition.
• www.mathcounts.org/sites/default/files/u49/2017%20National%20Final%20Standings.pdf
• Putnam Competition Individual and Team Winners.
• www.maa.org/programs/maa-awards/putnam-competition-individual-and-team-winners
• Past National Science Bowl Winners.
• science.energy.gov/wdts/nsb/about/historical-information/past-national-science-bowl-winners/past-hs-winners/
5. • “A consistent finding of this cross-national research has been the high performance of Asian groups on tests of nonverbal ability or performance IQ (PIQ), with scores on verbal measures around the mean. Thus the high IQ scores are largely due to superior scores on tests of nonverbal abilities, particularly visuo-spatial abilities.” [Dandy 00]
• “A general conclusion has emerged from a host of studies. In the words of Philip Vernon, a leading figure in the study of intelligence, there is a ‘unanimous finding that Orientals of all ages in any cultural setting score higher relative to Caucasians on spatial, numerical, or non-verbal intelligence tests…” [Bond 91:22-3]
• On higher Asian visuo-spatial ability, see section IV-8.C and its sources.
• SAT scores drop and racial gaps remain large.
• www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/09/03/sat-scores-drop-and-racial-gaps-remain-large
6. • “About 71 percent of science and engineering graduates are non-Hispanic White, 14 percent are Asian [who are only about 5% of the population]…
The non-Hispanic White and Asian populations were overrepresented among STEM workers in 2011. About 67 percent of the total workforce was non-Hispanic White, but they held 71 percent of STEM jobs (Figure 9). Asians held 15 percent of the STEM jobs compared with 6 percent of all jobs.”
Disparities in STEM Employment by Sex, Race,
and Hispanic Origin (2013).
• www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acs-24.pdf
• “It is their educational outperformance that is most remarkable: 49% of Asian-Americans have a bachelor’s degree, compared with 28% of the general population. Whereas Asian-Americans make up 5.6% of the population of the United States, according to the complaint to the Department of Education they make up more than 30% of the recent American maths and physics Olympiad teams and Presidential Scholars, and 25-30% of National Merit Scholarships.”
• www.economist.com/news/briefing/21669595-asian-americans-are-united-states-most-successful-minority-they-are-complaining-ever
• See section IV-8.E and its sources.
7. • The Rise of Asians in Classical Music.
• www.scena.org/lsm/sm9-5/ascension-Asiatiques-en.htm
• Chinese musicians hitting a high note in the West.
• www.nytimes.com/2007/04/03/world/americas/03iht-china.1.5125059.html
————
B. Explanation of the moderate Chinese performance on verbal tests: a need for creative interpretation of writing.
It is curious that Chinese score only about as well as Whites on language-based tests such as verbal IQ and SATs [1], in spite of their generally superior memory-based skill [2]. Given China’s more hierarchical society (sections II-7-8), it is possible that ability to persuade via language proficiency was less important than among Whites. Females evidently have a superiority to males in language acquisition (though not in advanced verbal skills) [3], unsurprising given their more communicative roles, and Whites could have a similar advantage to Chinese, though it should be attenuated at higher levels. A more likely source of difficulty for the Chinese lies in the need to creatively interpret writing to fully understand its meaning and intent, which is not always definite. Clever writers tend to write abstractly or to serve up only implicit hints of their true meanings, assuming the reader’s creative interpretation. As discussed in section IV-4.C, robust interpretation of writing is similar to robust incorporation of principles. This need is diminished but not eliminated by the presence of (abstract?) multiple choice answers and source material for writing given on SATs.
1. • “[E]leven of the studies [of the IQs of indigenous East Asians] contain measures of verbal and visualization abilities and in ten of these the visualization IQ is greater than the verbal IQ (the study in row 36 is the exception). The mean and median differences between the two abilities are both 12 IQ points. This difference appears in a variety of tests. The finding of the stronger visualization abilities and weaker verbal abilities of East Asians as compared with Europeans is so consistently present and is so large that it appears to be a real phenomenon.” [Lynn 06:86]
; “[F]ive of the studies [of IQs of East Asians in the United States] contain measures of verbal and visualization abilities and in four of
these the visualization IQ is greater than the verbal IQ (the study in row 13 is the exception).
The mean difference between the two abilities is 4.4 IQ points and is present in studies using a variety of tests. This confirms the pattern found in the samples of indigenous East Asians
given in Table 10.1.” [89-90]
; “A striking feature of the results for Mongoloids is that their verbal IQs are consistently lower than their visuospatial IQs. In most studies the differences are substantial amounting to between 10 to 15 IQ points. This pattern is present in Japan, Hong Kong, the United States and Canada. It has also been found among ethnic Japanese in Hawaii although these data are not presented in a form from which mean IQs can be calculated (Nagoshi and Johnson, 1987).
This difference is also picked up in the United States in performance on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), on which ethnic Orientals invariably do better than Caucasians on the mathematics test (largely a measure of general intelligence and visuospatial ability) but less well than Caucasians on the verbal test (Weiner, 1988).” [Lynn 91]
• “A consistent finding of the early studies of Asian Americans’ intelligence test performance has been a gap between performance on verbal and nonverbal measures. As described earlier, Coleman et al.’s (1966) comparisons showed the Asian American children had higher scores on tests of nonverbal ability compared to Anglo-American children but similar performance on verbal tests. Similarly, most of the studies in Vernon’s review found Asian American children to be slightly below the North American mean of 100 on verbal measures (e.g., Jensen’s Chinatown studies, cited in Vernon, 1982). However, Vemon noted that the disparity was usually small and appeared to be diminishing since the 1960s.” [Dandy 00]
• “Lesser, Fifer, and Clark’s elaborate study in 1965… compared the scores of four ethnic groups in New York on four aptitude, or Primary Factor, tests—Verbal, Reasoning, Number, and Spatial. These were given individually to 80 first-grade children in each group—Chinese, Jewish, black, and Puerto Rican. The distributions of scores in the total sample were normalized to a mean of 50. On this scale the Chinese obtained 48, 54, 54, and 54 on the four tests. That is, they were a little below average on Verbal, but above average on the other three factors…
Coleman’s famous report on Equality of Educational Opportunity (1966) compared four minority grows on a nonverbal intelligence test and a verbal achievement test. Table 2.2 shows the results at Grades I and 12. (The mean scores for the total population at all ages were 50.) Here, the Orientals are the highest scorers on both tests at both ages, and are superior to the total population, including whites, except on the Verbal test where they were a little below average from Grade 3 onwards…
; “Right from the 1920s Chinese American children have been found somewhat lower than whites on verbal intelligence tests and on verbal types of school achievement (e.g., reading comprehension). But they have come out the equal of, or higher than, whites on nonverbal intelligence tests such as Raven Matrices, Figure-Copying, Lorge-Thorndike, or performance tests such as Kohs Blocks and Draw-a-Man. In the earlier studies the verbal deficiency was quite considerable, but the more recent ones indicate mean IQs on verbal group tests of shoot 97 (i.e., little below the white average), and 110 on nonverbal and spatial tests (much above average).” [Vernon 82]
• This article gives “White” average scores on Critical Reading/Writing SAT Tests at 529/513, against “Asian-American” scores of 525/531, in 2015.
SAT scores drop and racial gaps remain large.
• www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/09/03/sat-scores-drop-and-racial-gaps-remain-large
• This paper gives the “White/Caucasian” average score on the LSAT Test at 152.75 against an “Asian” score of 152.63, in 2013-14.
LSAT Performance With Regional, Gender, and Racial/Ethnic Breakdowns; 2007-2008 Through 2013-2014
• www.lsac.org/docs/default-source/research-(lsac-resources)/tr-14-02.pdf
2. • The average IQ of the ten studies of indigenous Chinese given in [Lynn 06:Table 10.1] is 104.7 (Whites being normed at 100), about the same as the general East Asian IQ average of 105 [86]. Lynn shows that this average is consistent with the findings of recent IQ studies of East Asian immigrants in the U.S. [89-91], despite some outdated studies giving lower scores.
• On the Asian superiority in non-verbal skills, see the IQ and SAT data in the sources of the last section. On the Asian visuo-spatial superiority particularly, see the sources in the next section.
3. • “Girls say their first words and learn to speak in short sentences earlier than boys, and are generally more fluent in their pre-school years. They read earlier, too, and do better in coping with the building blocks of language like grammar, punctuation and spelling. Boys outnumber girls 4:1 in remedial reading classes. Later, women find it easier to master foreign languages, and are more proficient in their own, with a better command of grammar and spelling. They are also more fluent: stuttering and other speech defects occur almost exclusively among boys.” [Moir 89:17]
; “[G]irls speak their first words at an earlier age than boys, and develop better vocabularies. In a study of 2-4 year olds, girls are more likely than boys to be able to master the comparative subtleties of sophisticated grammar–like the difference between ‘I did this’ and ‘I’ve done this’–and the use of the passive tense — ‘I’m being teased by Jimmy’ rather than ‘Jimmie’s teasing me’.
At the age of three, 99 per cent of the speech of girls is comprehensible — it takes the boys, on average, a year longer. (It took Einstein five years to speak.) Girls form longer and more complex sentences, make fewer grammatical errors, and are better at tests which ask them to think of as many words as they can which include a certain letter of the alphabet.” [57-8]
; “As we have seen, boys do not do particularly well at school initially. Come puberty, though, and the boys accelerate dramatically. They catch up with the girls on the verbal and writing scores, and surge ahead in mathematical ability. Male IQ scores soar between the ages of fourteen and sixteen, while girls’ scores tend to level off, and even sometimes fall.” [89]
• “[W]hat is the evidence for sex differences in language? On average, women produce more words in a given period, fewer speech errors (such as using the wrong word), and perform better in the ability to discriminate speech sounds (such as consonants and vowels) than do men. Their average sentences are also longer, and their utterances show standard grammatical structure and correct pronounciation more often. They also find it easier to articulate words, and do this faster than men. Women can also recall words more easily. Most men have more pauses in their speech. And at the clinical level of severity, men are at least two times more likely to develop language disorders, such as stuttering.
In addition, girls start talking earlier than boys, by about one month, and their vocabulary size is greater. It is not clear whether receptive vocabulary size (how many words a child understands) differes between the sexes, but it seems that girls use language more at an earlier age. For example, they initiate talk more often with their parents, with other children, and with teachers. This greater use of language by girls may not be seen when in the company of boys, whose effect is usually to render the girls quieter or more inhibited.
Girls are also better spellers and readers. Boys tend to be faster at repeating a single syllable (e.g. ba-ba-ba), while girls tend to produce more syllables when the task is to repeat a sequence of different sounds (e.g. ba-da-ga). Girls are also better on tests of verbal memory, or recall of words. This female superiority is seen in older women, too, including those who are well into their eighties.” [Baron 03:57-8]
• “In a report published by the U.S. Department of Education (Bae et al., 2000), titled ‘‘Trends in Educational Equity of Girls and Women,’’ the data on reading and writing achievement are described this way: ‘‘Females have consistently outperformed males in writing achievement at the 4th, 8th, and 11th grade levels between 1988 and 1996. Differences in male and female writing achievement were relatively large. The writing scores of female 8th graders were comparable with those of 11th grade males’’ (p. 18). In a meta-analytic review of the research literature, Hedges and Nowell (1995) reported that ‘‘the large sex differences in writing . . . are alarming. The data imply that males are, on average, at a rather profound disadvantage in the performance of this basic skill’’ (p. 45). Thus, the advantage for females on tests of writing is large and robust by the middle to end of secondary school.
If an assessment of verbal abilities is heavily weighted with writing, and language-usage items cover topics that females are familiar with, sex differences favoring females will be much larger than they will be in an assessment of verbal abilities lacking these components. This is the case in the review of sex differences in a recently published review conducted in the United Kingdom (Strand, Deary, & Smith, 2006). The SAT-Verbal (SAT-V) test has (up through 2004) contained many verbal-analogy questions—a question type that is conceptually closer to mapping relationships than it is to other types of verbal usage, and one that often shows an advantage to males. Therefore, it is not surprising that the SAT-V test, despite being labeled a ‘‘verbal’’ test, does not tap the same verbal abilities as do tests of writing or other language areas in which females excel; nor is it surprising that males score higher than females on the SAT-V test.
The female advantage in several specific verbal abilities, such as reading, is international…” [Halpern 07]
• “Male students’ average verbal SAT score has been consistently higher than that of female students since the early 1970s (Indicator I-5b). Initially the gap was small, but the disparity grew, and during the 1980s the gender gap in verbal scores ranged from 10 to 13 points. The gap has narrowed since then [with the removal of the analogies subtest], with the average score of female examinees coming within four points of the male average in 2015.
From 2006 to 2015, female students scored, on average, more than ten points higher each year than their male counterparts on the SAT writing test (recording an average of 490 versus 478 in 2015).”
Performance on SAT Verbal/Critical Reading and Writing Exams
• www.humanitiesindicators.org/content/indicatordoc.aspx?i=23
————
C. Chinese excellence in math and science is due to visuo-spatial ability, not creativity.
Application of abstract mechanical and math principles is not necessarily creative, as explained in section III-4. Math/physics principles are definite, and in math/physics problems the required data as well as the locus of the unknown quantity (the goal) are givens [1]. If one has the requisite knowledge, the process of obtaining the goal-quantity from the given data is straightforward. Only in marginal cases might one possess a ‘repertoire’ of math techniques required for solution but need ‘creative’ trial and error to determine which, in what order, to employ. Higher math and science require memory of geometric diagrams illustrating relationships between quantities, and ability to mentally compare (and manipulate) and match these models with the data at hand. That is, higher math requires keen visuo-spatial ability (section III-1). Tests show that Chinese have superior visual-spatial ability to Whites [2], likely based on a ‘working memory’ superiority and perhaps a greater proclivity for visual-based motor skills involving judgments of orientation and distance.
1. • “It may be asked why Chinese children performed so well in the space conceptualization and reasoning tests. A close examination of these test items showed that they represented well-defined problems in which goals were explicitly stated. In solving this type of problem, children perform according to given problem rules.” [Bond 86:85-6]
2. • See the citations in the previous section of [Lynn 06] and [Lynn 91].
• “A consistent finding of this cross-national research has been the high performance of Asian groups on tests of nonverbal ability or performance IQ (PIQ), with scores on verbal measures around the mean. Thus the high IQ scores are largely due to superior scores on tests of nonverbal abilities, particularly visuo-spatial abilities. For example, Lynn, Paglieri, and Chan (1988) found Hong Kong Chinese children had signifrcantly higher scores on space relations, and Lynn (1982) determined that the Japanese children’s superior performance on the’ Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (V/ISC) relative to the U.S. standardization sample was “most pronounced in the tests of block design, mazes, picture arrangement and object assembly”, which are tests of nonverbal abilities G,.222). Lynn (1987, 1991) claimed that this bias in favour of nonverbal abilities strengthens his case for Asian genetic superiority in intelligence.” [Dandy 00]
• “Clearly, the Chinese are considerably higher than whites on the spatial Figure-Copying test and the Lorge-Thorndike Nonverbal norms, and they are somewhat higher on the Raven Matrices…
[Chinese] have come out the equal of, or higher than, whites on nonverbal intelligence tests such as Raven Matrices, Figure-Copying, Lorge-Thorndike, or performance tests such as Kohs Blocks and Draw-a-Man. In the earlier studies the verbal deficiency was quite considerable, but the more recent ones indicate mean IQs on verbal group tests of shoot 97 (i.e., little below the white average), and 110 on nonverbal and spatial tests (much above average).” [Vernon 82]
• “Above all, [symmetry] was (and is) manifested in the exquisite Chinese awareness of absolute orientation. Anyone who has lived in Peking (at least before it lost its walls and became a victim of urban sprawl) will remember how even the moving of a table a few feet in a room is never carried out in the relative terminology of “left” and “right,” but always based on absolute direction (“move it a little north” or half a foot west”).” [Bodde 91:108]
————
D. The Chinese ability set is comparable to that of autistic savants.
An interesting parallel of the Chinese ability set comes in the form of autistic savants, who in many respects represent extreme cases of it. While Chinese are task-focused in general, autistic savants are hyper-focused on certain subjects. The basis of autism seems to be that sensings are unfiltered, i.e. unabstracted, meaning that autists have concrete memory for what interests them but are irritated and confused by, or withdrawn from, what does not. Leading expert Darrold Treffert describes the memory/skill versus creativity trade-off for autistic savants similarly as I have described it for Chinese, except at a greater extreme: “In general, savants echo rather than create, and mimic rather than invent. This in no way detracts from the enormity of their skills… Nothing is absolute, and one can sometimes see some low levels of creativity in the savant. But in general, the trade-off is less inventiveness and creativity for remarkable literal recall, storage and retrieval, sometimes linked with a vast musical or mathematical lexicon, based on a unique kind of nonsymbolic, high-fidelity memory function” [1].
Autistic savants are characterized by a strong, concrete memory [2] and excellent skills in their area(s) of interest, a deficiency in abstract reasoning [3] and creativity [4], and poor social [5] and language abilities [6]. The language deficiency is partly due to overly concrete comprehension, i.e. a lack of creative interpretation [7]. While their range of interests is limited [8], some have developed amazing numerical calculation [9], visual-spatial [10], and sculpting abilities [11]. Some calculate large prime numbers, determine and apply the principles of calendar progression [12], and develop spatial skills “including the capacity to measure distances precisely without benefit of instruments, the ability to construct complex models or structures with painstaking accuracy, or the mastery of map-making and direction-finding” [13]. They are able to detect and apply rules/patterns of the data they memorize, without conscious awareness or formulation of these rules [14]. Autistic savants are also known to be very careless of hazards [15]. If you have read sections III-IV, this will all sound familiar.
1. • See the [Treffert 89:305-6] citation, below.
2. • “Whatever the [savant’s] special skill, it is always associated with prodigious memory. Some observers list memory as a separate special skill, however prodigious memory is an ability all savants possess, cutting across all of the skill areas as a shared, integral part of the syndrome itself…
The special skills are always accompanied by prodigious memory. Whatever the special abilities, a remarkable memory of a unique and uniform type welds the condition together. Terms such as automatic, mechanical, concrete, and habitlike have been applied to this extraordinary memory. Down used the term “verbal adhesion”; Critchley used the terms “exultation of memory” or “memory without reckoning”; Tredgold used the term “automatic”; and Barr characterized his patient with prodigious memory as “an exaggerated form of habit.”… Savant memory is characteristically very deep, but exceedingly narrow, within the confines of the accompanying special skill.” [Treffert 09]
; “What conclusions can be drawn, then, regarding the savant and musical genius?… Third, the types of musical skills and traits seem very constant from savant to savant—insistence on sameness, perfect pitch and prodigious memory with ability to repeat exactly, mistakes and all, pieces of extraordinary length and complexity.” [Treffert 89:57-8]
; “Buxton’s ability and tremendous capacity to remember numbers in gigantic strings and his ability to carry out calculations with great speed can be judged by his responses to questions he was asked…
Scripture was intrigued with the memory of both Fuller and Buxton. Both could leave long computations half done and, at the end of several months, resume the problem-solving exactly where they left off. Scripture, in fact, ranked memory above rapidity in setting the lightning calculators apart from the rest of us. The accuracy of memory in Fuller and Buxton was astounding… “Although an accurate memory for a long time may not be possessed by every rapid calculator, he must be able to retain before the mind with absolute accuracy the results of the various processes performed till he has finished the problem.” [83-4]
; “[There is a] dichotomy between the very bright and the very limited, who seem such unlikely co-owners of this extraordinary gift [fantastic calculating ability]. These co-owners, in fact, share another gift as well—the gift of prodigious memory. If one were to rank them on a scale of memory quotient rather than intelligence quotient they would be equals—and certainly superior to the rest of us…
Memories of savants and prodigies are extraordinarily accurate, deep and rapid. Visual imagery is the type of memory most often used. In some savants, however, either auditory or tactile imagery may be used as an alternative to visualization. Whatever the type, the imagery of savants and prodigies sometimes has an especially striking width and vividness in addition to the depth and quickness described by…” [93]
; See the [197 and 206] citations, below.
; “La Fountaine, in her 1974 study of five savant subjects, found that on the Wechsler scales “the highest scores for all subjects were on memory type items, which are presumed to be measuring short-term memory….
In summary, observation of superior memory in savants has been confirmed by tests specifically measuring that ability. The memory is of a concrete, verbal type and seems to be a spared function that stands in contrast to otherwise markedly limited global intelligence.” [206]
; “As can be seen, many of the symptoms of Asperger’s Syndrome—withdrawal, peculiar language, concreteness, preoccupation with sameness, flatness of effect, etc.—are exactly the same as those of Early Infantile Autism. Indeed the majority of the symptoms in the two conditions are identical.” [250]
• “One feature which Kanner noted was that autistic children had excellent memories, seemingly out of line with their frequent general learning difficulties. They remembered strings of apparently unconnected items particularly well, and this memory capacity will become relevant when we will talk of the nature of autistic savants’ talents.” [Hermelin 01:41]
• “In a 2012 study of eight prominent child prodigies, Ruthsatz documented many characteristics that are often found in children with autism, such as difficulties in social settings and obsessive attention to detail. The prodigies also had remarkable skills in working memory — the ability to manipulate information stored in short-term memory banks — scoring two standard deviations above the mean. Six out of eight of the prodigies scored in the 99.9th percentile.” [Marsa 16]
3. • “[Savant] skills tend to be right hemisphere in type. These skills can be characterized as non-symbolic, artistic, concrete, and directly perceived, in contrast to left hemisphere skills that are more sequential, logical, and symbolic, including language specialization.” [Treffert 09]
; “Steele et al. did a formal neuropsychological test battery on [an autistic savant] using thirteen subtests. This individual, whose skill was in mathemetics, did well in that area, as expected. The subject scored very poorly in tests of verbal abstract ability and in tests of verbal recall requiring associations. The researchers did find a high WAIS Verbal I.Q., but felt that it was due to concrete verbal memory.” [Treffert 89:197]
; “Steele et al. did administer a complete neuropsychological test battery to their subject. On the Wechsler Memory Scale the subject scored in the 97th percentile but subtests showed this superiority to be nearly entirely localized to concrete verbal memory. There was no evidence of eidetic imagery. Leslie Lemkie’s neuropsychological test battery showed that “immediate attention and memory are relative strengths on this test. In the short-term memory tests subarea, performance is approximately in the normal range.” This area of formal functioning was in sharp contrast to severely impaired functioning otherwise, particulary with respect to abstraction abilities. The test showed clear evidence of preserved memory coupled with the ability to think only concretely.” [206]
; “One final biological factor seems important in explaining the talented savant. That factor is impaired abstract thinking couple with an attention defect. Concrete thought patterns linked with inability to broaden focus results in unusually intense concentration within an exceedingly narrow range. In such instances there is little symbolic thought but there is high fidelity recall.” [260]
• “[Savant] Peek’s abnormal brain wiring certainly came at a cost. Though he was able to immediately move new information from short-term memory to long-term memory, there wasn’t much processing going on in between. His adult fluid reasoning ability and verbal comprehension skills were on par with a child of 5, and he could barely understand the meaning in proverbs or metaphors. He also suffered deficits in the area of self-care: he couldn’t dress himself or brush his teeth without assistance.” [Kaufman 14]
• “Autistic savants are characterised by… a tendency to be rigid, inflexible and context bound resulting in difficulty applying skills to new circumstances.”
Giftedness and Autism: Savant Skill Fact Sheet
• www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/_WMS/savant/pdf/resources/articles/Savant%20Skills%20Fact%20Sheet%20Revised%20-%20July%202013.pdf
4. • “This study points out that not only do savants access specific cognitive stores of information (as opposed to having simple eidetic recall) in their remarkable memory operations, but they also call on that same store of information for generative or creative processes, at least in their improvisation. But improvisation operates within clear constraints and does not represent free-form creative genius. In the final portion of their report on this study, the researchers in fact conclude that the talents of savants, while remarkable, “fall short of those which underlie the achievements of true creative genius.” They speculate, based on general findings about the relationship between general inteliigence and creativity, that a certain complexity of “multi-stage mental architecture” is a prerequisite for the emergence of a “profoundly original idea” and that the savant probably lacks all of that architecture, as well as what the researchers term “cognitive efficiency” in accessing that architecture. Speaking of creating “truly novel ideas,” the study concludes: “If idiot savants are barred from this process, it may be because, if not intelligence, then intact and fully integrated cortical and subcortical systems, which are lacking in those with profound mental handicaps, may be a necessary though not a sufficient requirement for the manifestation of generative, expressive and executive abilities at their highest levels.
In general, savants echo rather than create, and mimic rather than invent. This in no way detracts from the enormity of their skills; it is a qualitative difference. While Leslie Lemkie has more than a tape-recorder memory in that he can improvise extensively, his improvisations—which he generates from the vast lexicon of music that he is somehow, marvelously, able to tap—are still variations on a theme. He is still not creating something entirely new, using the ordinary definition of ceativity. Alonzo does not do free-form sculpture, and Richard Wawro does not do impressionistic art. Alonzo’s sculptures are exact, to the fiber, reproductions based on his remarkable recall. Richard’s paintings incorporate some interpretation, but they to are quite literal, astoundingly so in terms of the time elapsed from when scenes get imprinted and when they are remembered.
Nothing is absolute, and one can sometimes see some low levels of creativity in the savant. But in general, the trade-off is less inventiveness and creativity for remarkable literal recall, storage and retrieval, sometimes linked with a vast musical or mathematical lexicon, based on a unique kind of nonsymbolic, high-fidelity memory function. This is important because it may provide a fortuitous opportunity to further study, in a circumscribed manner, the fascinating and important interfaces of creativity, intelligence, and memory.” [Treffert 89:305-6]
; “One additional observation about N.P. is worthy of mention because it is characteristic of most of the savants described thus far, beginning with Blind Tom. The music of the savant, while impressive in structure and accuracy, is almost always devoid of expression and innuendo. Sloboda sums up this feature of musical savants nicely when, speaking of N.P, is describes that savant’s playing as “wooden and metronomic in the extreme. It seems as though N.P. generally retains the structural ‘husk’ but discards all the expressive ‘flesh’. This same colorless, stereotyped, mechanical, “husk without flesh” quality that characterizes the performance of the musical savants also permeates, as will be seen, his or her performance in other areas of special skill.” [53]
; “What conclusions can be drawn, then, regarding the savant and musical genius?… Fourth, as remarkable as the music skills are, they are mechanical, stereotyped, and devoid of emotion or passion. Fifth, the musical skill is almost always with the piano. And finally, creativity is most often limited to improvisation and producing variations on a theme rather than producing new themes and new pieces, although some instances of [prompted] music inventiveness have been described.” [57-8]
• “Three studies are reported that address the often described impoverished creativity in autism. Using the Torrance Creativity Tests, Experiment 1 found that children with autism and Asperger syndrome (AS) showed impairments. Experiment 2 tested two explanations of these results: the executive dysfunction and the imagination deficit hypotheses. Results supported both hypotheses. Children with autism and AS could generate possible novel changes to an object, though they generated fewer of these relative to controls. Furthermore, these were all reality-based, rather than imaginative. Experiment 3 extended this using a test of imaginative fluency. Children with autism and AS generated fewer suggestions involving attribution of animacy to foam shapes, compared to controls, instead generating reality-based suggestions of what the shapes could be.” [Craig 99a]
; “Autism spectrum conditions are diagnosed on the basis of impaired imagination. The present study used a totally free story-telling method to assess if narratives produced by children with autism or Asperger Syndrome (AS) contained fewer imaginative events…
Both the children with autism and AS were less likely to introduce imaginary elements into their stories in Condition 2, though the children with AS were more able to produce imaginative narratives than children with autism in Condition 1.
Conclusions: This study provides experimental evidence for imaginative impairments in story-telling in children with autism spectrum conditions.” [Craig 99b]
; “This study investigated imagination via drawing tasks, in 15 children with autism and 15 children with Asperger Syndrome, compared to verbal mental age matched normal children and children with moderate learning difficulties (MLD). Experiment 1 used the Draw an Impossible Man Task. While children with autism were impaired relative to the normal group, they were not impaired relative to the children with MLD. In order to probe for an imagination deficit, Experiment 2 employed a more challenging measure of imaginative drawing, a task involving mixing categories to produce drawings of real or unreal entities (e.g., drawing half-fish/half-mouse). This revealed an autism-specific deficit. Experiment 3 confirmed this was not due to difficulties in combining elements per se. Experiment 4 required subjects to transform a picture (e.g., a cloud into a swan) and again found an autism-specific deficit. Children with Asperger Syndrome were only impaired when required to make such transformations spontaneously.” [Craig 01]
5. • “Though Christopher has never been formally diagnosed as suffering from autism or Asperger Syndrome, he does show most of the behavioural features associated with these conditions. He tends to avoid eye contact with other people, and hardly ever shows any strong emotions apart from his delight and enthusiasm in anything to do with foreign languages. He does not engage spontaneously in general conversations, and when a testing session ends he tends to get up without another word or glance and leaves the room. In spite of his normal verbal IQ like others with autism or Asperger Syndrome he fails to understand irony or jokes. He also cannot understand metaphors, and he responds in a manner typical for those with autism to situations where it is necessary to appreciate other people’s states of mind, thoughts and beliefs.” [Hermelin 01:64]
• “In a 2012 study of eight prominent child prodigies, Ruthsatz documented many characteristics that are often found in children with autism, such as difficulties in social settings and obsessive attention to detail.” [Marsa 16]
6. • “Young traveled to a number of countries and met with 51 savants and their families, completing the largest study to date on savants, using uniform history taking and
standardized psychological testing. Forty-one savants carried a diagnosis of autism and the remainder some other type of intellectual disability. Twenty were rated as prodigious savants, 20 were rated as talented, and the remaining 19 had splinter skills. The savants in this series of cases had the following elements in common: neurological impairment with idiosyncratic and divergent intellectual ability; language and intellectual impairments consistent with autism…” [Treffert 09]
; “In the savant this unconscious incorporation, or “reckoning”, is only in certain limited areas, for their skills, however many they have, do not include the acquisition of language.” [Treffert 89:93]
; See the [250] citation, above.
• See the [Hermelin 01:41] citation below, and the [Hermelin 01:64] citation, above.
7. • “Kanner also observed deficits in the area of language. These children began to talk late and some did not learn to speak at all. If they did, their language was extremely concrete and literal, so that they could not understand jokes and irony, or interpret metaphors. One of our collaborators told me of a rather intelligent autistic boy, whom she saw sobbing while waiting in the lunch queue at his special school. When asked what was wrong, he pointed to the menu written on the board which offered ‘marble cake’. He said unhappily, ‘I cannot eat this, marble is much too hard.'” [Hermelin 01:41]
; “Smith and Tsimpli also tested Christopher’s understanding of metaphors. That is of particular interest, as people with autism generally cannot cope with these very well. Kate the poet, des-cribed in Chapter 4, is an exception to this, though her use of metaphors is restricted to her poetry. Usually people with autism or Asperger Syndrome tend to be very literal and concrete in their speech and understanding, like the little boy who thought ‘marble cake’ was too hard to eat. Christopher also showed such limitations when asked to explain the meaning of statements such as ‘No man is an island’ or ‘Standing on the shoulders of a giant’. His response to what such statements meant was a puzzled ‘I don’t know’. Thus he, as well as most other people with autism or Asperger Syndrome, seem to lack an understanding of what one may call ‘interpretive language use’. Such incomprehension also includes irony, jokes, rhetorical questions and other metalinguistic language aspects.” [70]
• “The trade-off between memory and meaning is common among savants. The purpose of memory is to simplify experience. We didn’t evolve memory to be precise. Instead, we extract meaning wherever we can so that we can organize the regularities of experience and prepare for similar situations in the future. But without the imposition of meaning, savants can focus on literal recall. Some savants even have hyperlexia, which is the opposite of dyslexia. They are precocious readers, but have no comprehension of what they are reading.” [Kaufman 14]
8. • “Such concentration, and the muting of both external and internal stimuli, result in an inordinate capacity to tolerate boredom and repetition, repeating the same behaviors again and again or poring intensely and endlessly over the same written materials, such as bus schedules, compilations of sports statistics or almanacs. While most of us would tire of these activities or at least be distracted by something external or internal, not so with the savant. This is particularly true of autistic patients, who will spend literally hours being fascinated by one spinning object, or some strings, or gazing at a single picture or a printed page.” [Treffert 89:260]
• “The reason why some autistic individuals have savant abilities is not known. There are many theories… For example, Dr. Rimland speculates that these individuals have incredible concentration abilities and can focus their complete attention to a specific area of interest.”
Research: Autistic Savants, by by Stephen M. Edelson, Ph.D.
• www.autism.com/understanding_savants
9. “[S]avant skills are usually found in 5 general categories:… Mathematics: including lightning calculating or the ability to compute prime numbers, for example, in the absence of other simple arithmetic abilities.” [Treffert 09]
• See the [Treffert 89:83-4, 93] citations, above.
• See the [Hermelin 01:111] citation, below.
10. • “[S]avant skills are usually found in 5 general categories:… Mechanical or spatial skills: including the capacity to measure distances precisely without benefit of instruments, the ability to construct complex models or structures with painstaking accuracy, or the mastery of mapmaking and direction-finding.” [Treffert 09]
; “Memories of savants and prodigies are extraordinarily accurate, deep and rapid. Visual imagery is the type of memory most often used. In some savants, however, either auditory or tactile imagery may be used as an alternative to visualization. Whatever the type, the imagery of savants and prodigies sometimes has an especially striking width and vividness in addition to the depth and quickness described by…” [Treffert 89:93]
; On specific cases of autistic savant mechanical and visuo-spatial abilities, see [122-30]; Of one savant: “He was 18, and although he was clearly autistic, he had memorized the entire highway atlas of the United States. He could recite, with the detail and precision of a premapped route from a travel club, the route from any point in America to any other point…[stunning example].” [129]; Of another savant: “Rimland remarks on that ability in some of his autistic savants by giving a case example: “If we travel in summer to the country, and we have made the trip before, Herbert can lead you to the lodge; i.e. when you leave the highway and must find the way here and there down dirt roads, etc., he can name every curve, every street you will pass, every landmark, and do this without error.” [130]
• “Recent studies have suggested that children with autism perform better than matched controls on visual search tasks and that this stems from a superior visual discrimination ability. This study assessed whether these findings generalize from children to adults with autism. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that, like children, adults with autism were superior to controls at searching for targets. Experiment 3 showed that increases in target-distractor similarity slowed the visual search performance of the control group significantly more than that of the autism group, suggesting that the adults with autism have a superior visual discrimination ability. Thus, these experiments replicate in adults previous findings in children with autism.” [O’riordan 04]
11. • On autistic savant sculpting, see [Treffert 89:155-9], along with the [305-6] citation, above.
12. • “[S]avant skills are usually found in 5 general categories:… Calendar calculating.” [Treffert 09]
• See the source citations below, on how calendar calculators detect and apply rules/patterns of the data they memorize, without conscious awareness or formulation of these rules.
13. • “[S]avant skills are usually found in 5 general categories:… Mechanical or spatial skills: including the capacity to measure distances precisely without benefit of instruments, the ability to construct complex models or structures with painstaking accuracy…” [Treffert 09]
; Treffert discusses a mechanical savant who from a young age liked to take objects apart and assemble them, and make models and draw blueprints of things he had seen, such as airplanes and boats; “Earl had mechanical talent out of proportion to his intellectual and speech limitations. At one point, without suggestion or help from anyone, he took a clock apart and rigged it up as a windmill, which ran very well. His performance on all subtests for language and comprehension placed him inferior to 99% of 10-year-old boys. However, on tests of mechanical ability, dexterity and mechanical comprehension, he did unexpectedly well—in one of those subtests, which often gave college students difficulty, he placed in the upper 99 percent of persons his age. In tests of concrete material (pictures of specific objects) and discrimination of form, Earl displayed intelligence, efficiency and superior ability.” [Treffert 89:122-3]
; Treffert discusses another mechanical savant who had very low IQ and severe verbal impairments: “In the institution Mr. A. repaired clocks, appliances and bicycles for other residents. He was able to disassemble and clean various types of equipment, run the film projector and build furniture and lamps… Except with respect to his mechanical capacity, his behavior was quite typical of persons of his limited mechanical capacity.
In 1978 Hoffman and Reeves set up some specific tests to assess his mechanical abilities. In one he was given a broken electrical alarm clock to repair, and in another he was given a ten-speed bicycle that was broken in several places; he repaired both, easily and quickly.” [122-3]
; A third, similar mechanical savant is discussed on pages [124-6].
14. • “The [musical] savant can compose, they conclude, not just improvise. That ability depends on an unconscious sense of the rules of music more than on general intelligence. Like the calendar calculator, who has tremendous ability with no cognitive sense of method, the savant plays brilliantly without understanding how.
Some describe music, simply, as unconscious counting because stable sets of rules, regularities, and relationships—predictable structural patterns—exist in both music and math. It is an unconscious access to these rule-governed structural relationships that allows many savants their special, spectacular skills in the particular areas of math and music… This same type of unconscious access will be explored later when we look at the calendar and the lightning calculators.” [Treffert 89:55]
; “[Experiments by Rosen demonstrated that calendar calculating savants were using rules…] Yet both subjects, like the others who have been discussed, were unable to describe whatever system they were using. Like George and Charles, they explained it away by saying simply that they “knew it.”” [71-2]
; “Hermelin and O’Connor concluded [based on differential error rates] that memory alone could not explain [savants’ calendar calculating] skill. They postulated that, in addition to using some arithmetic calculating skills, the savant also used the rules that govern the Gregorian calendar. In fact, one of the eight subjects stated that he was aware of, and used, the fact that the Gregorian calendar repeated itself every 28 years.
In 1986 the researchers tested in greater depth to see whether these savants used any of these three rule-based strategies:…
They devised a number of carefully constructed experiments, using dates that were easily related to these rules and dates that were more remotely connected (for instance, dates in a leap year)…
The researchers concluded several things after a detailed analysis of the many responses. First, all the calendar calculators used both memory and arithmetic skills for pass years and for less-remoted years, whether in the past or the future. All also did use rule-based strategies; however, they did so for more difficult dates when their easier-to-use memory and arithmetic skills were not sufficient.” [75-6]
; ‘Only the higher-IQ subjects were able to state their methods used, similarly as only adults are able to state the rules of grammar that children take for granted.’ [76]
; “Scipture referred to the “one-sided” as mere “reckoning machines”. I would call them mere memory machines, with one added quality—the ability to unconsciously incorporate sequences, whether of notes in music, of dates in calendar calculating or of numbers in lightning calculating, with no conscious knowledge of the rules of music, calendars or mathematics. This is the same phenomenon that occurs when we unconsciously incorporate language before we know anything of verbs, pronouns or adjectives as such. In the savant this unconscious incorporation, or “reckoning”, is only in certain limited areas, for their skills, however many they have, do not include the acquisition of language.” [93]
• “For the structure of the following year all one needs to know is the day on which it starts… In fact there are only 14 possible yearly configurations of day—date relations, seven of them referring to non-leap and the other seven to leap years. The savant knowing this has only to work out the day on which the next year starts. I must stress again that by using the term ‘knowing’ here I do not necessarily mean to convey a conscious knowledge that can be verbally stated. Rather it can be compared to knowing the syntactical rules of one’s own language and using these correctly without necessarily being able to state them. But just as some people can verbalise rules of grammar, so some savants can tell us the calendar rules. As the calendar is a uniquely closed system with fixed rela-tionships between individual components and a limited number of rules, it is not surprising that it appeals to individuals with autism.” [Hermelin 01:103]
; “In the early nineteenth century Colburn, a famous mathematical child prodigy, could rapidly factorise any given number containing up to seven digits when he was six years old. However, he was not able to say how he did this, and often started to cry when pestered with persistent questioning. But one night when he was aged eight, he woke up his father saying: ‘I can tell you how I find the numbers.’ His father immediately wrote down what the child told him, and in fact he had used a theorem for factorising first stated in the third century BC by the Greek mathematician Eratosthenes for the identification of prime numbers. When done in pre-computer days the method was lengthy with large numbers, though of course the little Colburn could use it instantly.” [111]
• “Another feature of calendrical savants that has been considered to argue against calculation is that they are typically unable to give an account of how they solve date questions (O’Connor 1989). Normally, one would expect conscious awareness of calculation. However, savants may not be able to introspect even when they can be observed counting when solving problems (Scheerer et al. 1945). If savants do not mention calculation even when they can be observed to be calculating, then what they do not say about their method is inconclusive about the basis of their skill.” The study then lays out the evidence that savants are, in fact, calculating based on rules. [Cowan 09]
• “These findings suggest two dissociable sources of savant calendar knowledge: structural and event related. Structural knowledge, as revealed in experiments 1 to 3, reflects relationships and recursive patterns within the calendar. Associative memory may incorporate low-level small-scale mapping between individual dates (e.g. consecutive dates falling on consecutive weekdays) through to more global regularities (e.g. 28y repetition). For most savants, such knowledge may not be consciously formulated. On further questioning with the present group, the majority of individuals were unable to identify the pattern of list relationships or provide verbal insight into their date calculation methods. In this way, the application of calendar regularities in savant calculation may be similar to the use of grammatical rules; although we may struggle to state the formal rules of grammar, this does not preclude their use…
It is further argued that structural knowledge of the calendar, rather than event-related knowledge, enables the process of savant date calculation. An early interest in dates and the occurrence of events may be precursors of the ability and aid in the elaboration and consolidation of a growing structural knowledge base. However, it is the knowledge of how one date relates to another and the activation of mappings between date representations that constitute the calculation process. In terms of skill acquisition, it is suggested that structural knowledge forms from repeated exposure to day–date pairings derived from many possible sources, including direct engagement with calendars. Through such experience, individuals are exposed to examples of calendar regularities and repetitions. Such information need not be consciously processed; date knowledge may reorganize to reflect structural relationships in the absence of conscious awareness.” [Heavy 12]
15. • “Like other autistic children, [savant Nadia] had little sense of ordinary dangers and risks and could not be trusted to keep from running into traffic or subjecting herself to other hazards.” [Treffert 89:109]
————
E. Chinese underachieve during careers, likely due to inferior creativity and judgement.
Chinese (-Americans) do not succeed in ‘the real world’ in proportion to their high academic attainment, a phenomenon that in America anti-Whites call “the Bamboo ceiling”. Ralph Townsend recognized a schism between Chinese technical aptitude and practical ability in the 1930s [1]. Asians are greatly underrepresented relative to their college degrees and professional employment [2] as college presidents [3], as law-firm partners [4] and district court judges [5], as lab and branch directors at the NIH [6], and as corporate managers and executives in general [7], even in technical fields such as Silicon Valley companies [8]. Of course, the anti-White media blames this on White “racism”, in spite of the Marxist brainwashing of ‘educated’ Whites and the fanatical drive for “diversity” that pervades corporate America. These Asian shortcomings also get attributed to their timidity, which is probably a factor. But likely the main factor is an innate Chinese inferiority in creativity and judgment in complex situations, in the ‘real world’ of dynamic social/economic interactions with society, as outlined in section III, particularly III-3.
1. • “Were the Chinese able to get along with one another and were they possessed of constructive spirit, a second [successful international trade city like White-run] Shanghai could be built at any of several places not far from the mouth of the Yangtze, many of them more suitable than the site of Shanghai for a great metropolis. You learn at once, upon consulting the data of their personal history, that for two generations they have had swarms of foreign-trained men theoretically competent for such an undertaking. During the present century they have had thousands. Every year for decades now they have had large numbers of Chinese architects, engineers, business graduates and other academically proficient experts in every line returned from the universities of America and Europe. Plus this array of theoretically competent talent, they have an abundance of capital. There are many Chinese millionaires. The truth is, as will be shown farther on, that they show a strange inability to make anything work under their own management when the project is larger than a one-man enterprise.
They have most of what it takes, in the modern world, to make things work. They have a talent for obedience, when well supervised. They have industriousness and intelligence. But two other essentials, honesty and willingness to cooperate, they emphatically lack, and some deeply inner ingredient of character seems to militate against remedying this lack. They simply cannot work among themselves in large undertakings. And they do not have a satisfactory mental connection between academic ability and practical application.” [Townsend 33:13]
2. • See section IV-8.A and its sources, and the other sources in this section.
3. • “While African-Americans make up about 6.2 percent of the nation’s college presidents and Hispanics about 5.9 percent, Asian Americans account for only 1.5 percent. The numbers are equally dismal among other executive positions in the academy, including deans, provosts and vice presidents.”
Breaking through the Bamboo Ceiling, by Oguntoyinbo, Lekan.
• www.questia.com/magazine/1P3-3351645291/breaking-through-the-bamboo-ceiling
4. • “A similar effect is visible in the law. In 2014, whereas 11% of law-firm associates were Asian, 3% of partners were.”
The model minority is losing patience (Oct 3, 2015)
• www.economist.com/news/briefing/21669595-asian-americans-are-united-states-most-successful-minority-they-are-complaining-ever
5. • “According to the United States Census 2010, Asian Americans make up 5.6% of the American population,[15] as of 2014, 3% of the district court judges are Asian American.[19] Between 2009 and 2010, President Obama had nominated eight Asian Americans to a seat on the U.S. District Court, four women and four men.” So, Obama helped to ‘fix this problem’ by appointing a bunch of Asian judges on account of their race.
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboo_ceiling
6. • “Even in specific areas with a lot of Asian-Americans, they are concentrated in the lower ranks. Although a third of software engineers in the Silicon Valley are Asian, they make up only 6% of board members and 10% of corporate officers of the Bay Area’s 25 largest companies. At the National Institutes of Health, where 21.5% of scientists are Asians, only 4.7% of the lab or branch directors are.”
If Asian-Americans are so smart, how come they have no power or influence? (2011), by Jan C. Ting.
• whyy.org/articles/if-asian-americans-are-so-smart-how-come-they-have-no-power-or-influence/
7. • “The problem seems especially acute for Asian-Americans. Consider: Although they make up 5% of the U.S. population, and 16% of all Ivy League college grads (35% at top schools like Stanford and M.I.T.), Asians hold only 2% of executive positions at Fortune 500 companies, according to a recent study by the nonprofit Center for Work-Life Policy.”
Training executives to think globally (2011), by Anne Fisher.
• www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20111118/BLOGS05/311189996
; “About 5% of U.S. residents identify themselves as Asian, but Asian Americans hold fewer than 2% of executive jobs at Fortune 500 companies, according to a study published in July by the nonprofit Center for Work-Life Policy.
The gap clearly isn’t due to a lack of education: 16% of all Ivy League college grads identify as Asian or Asian American (over three times the group’s representation in the population overall), and more than one-third (35%) of students at top schools like M.I.T. and Stanford identify as Asian or Asian American.
Granted, every now and then someone who identifies as Asian or Asian American scales the corporate heights, like Andrea Jung, CEO of Avon Products (AVP), and Citigroup (C) chief Vikram Pandit. Altogether, eight Fortune 500 CEOs identify themselves as Asian.”
Is there a ‘bamboo ceiling’ at U.S. companies (2011), by Anne Fisher.
• web.archive.org/web/20120212000635/ • management.fortune.cnn.com/2011/10/07/asian-americans-promotion-us-companies/
• “According to a 2011 study by the Center for Talent Innovation, Asian Americans are far more likely to have a college degree than the average person, and while they make up just 5 percent of the population, they constitute 18 percent of the student body at Harvard and 24 percent at Stanford. They have little trouble getting hired, but the picture changes as they move toward senior management; despite their numbers and achievement level, Asian Americans account for just 1.4 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs and 1.9 percent of corporate officers overall.
Even at tech companies—which are stereotypically hospitable to Asians—they are notably absent at the top. “This is definitely something I think about,” says Carrie Fei, a member of Feng’s Lean In Circle who aspires to work as a tech executive but sees that function as typically “very, very white-dominated and male-dominated.””
Cracking the Bamboo Ceiling (2014), by Liza Mundy.
• www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/11/cracking-the-bamboo-ceiling/380800/
• “Yet the impressive credentials and achievements that have caused them to be dubbed “the model minority” aren’t reflected in senior-most leadership positions. Asians make up 5% of the U.S. population, but only 1.8% of Fortune 500 CEOs and barely 2% of board members.”
Breaking Through the Bamboo Ceiling (2011), by Sylvia Ann Hewlett.
• hbr.org/2011/08/breaking-through-the-bamboo-ce
8. • “Only 1% of corporate directors are Asian. Even in Silicon Valley, where about 30% of tech professionals or their forebears hail from Pacific Rim countries, Asian Americans account for only 12.5% of managers; 80% of tech bosses are Caucasian.”
Piercing the ‘Bamboo Ceiling’ (2005), by Anne Fisher.
• money.cnn.com/2005/08/08/news/economy/annie/fortune_annie080805/index.htm
• “A recent study by non-profit Ascend found that among 5 of the largest tech companies (Google, HP, Intel, LinkedIn and Yahoo), Asian and Asian Americans represent 27% of professionals, but only half that among executives.”
How Asian Americans Can Break Through The Bamboo Ceiling (2016), by Liyan Chen.
• www.forbes.com/sites/liyanchen/2016/01/20/how-asian-americans-can-break-through-the-bamboo-ceiling/
• “Asians do well in the lower and middle levels of companies and professions, but are less visible in the upper echelons. Buck Gee, Janet Wong and Denise Peck, Asian-American executives who put together data from Google, Intel, Hewlett Packard, LinkedIn and Yahoo for a report published by Ascend, an Asian-American organisation, found that 27% of professionals, 19% of managers and 14% of executives were Asian-American (see chart).”
The model minority is losing patience (Oct 3, 2015)
• www.economist.com/news/briefing/21669595-asian-americans-are-united-states-most-successful-minority-they-are-complaining-ever
• See the Liza Mundy citation, above.
END Sources of sections III-IV
—————————————————-
V. Whites have been more innovative than Chinese in all fields.
Introduction: Overview of Europe’s ascension.
Technology in a broad sense means devices, techniques, and institutions that produce material, social, and aesthetic goods. Since the time Whites attained a sufficient agricultural yield in Europe’s challenging environment to enable urbanization, their rate of technological advance has been far higher than China’s. We will now review the record that Whites have been more innovative than Chinese in material technology, social/economic institutions, and artistic pursuits.
The earliest civilizations were all established on alluvial plains of great rivers—the Tigris–Euphrates, the Nile, the Indus, and the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers, because this is where high-yield agriculture with minimal technology is most feasible. This advantage allowed China a nearly two thousand year head start in urbanization against mainland (Nordic) Europe, enabling China to garner many basic technological ‘firsts’. Europe above the Mediterranean littoral established cities of significant size only at around 1000 AD, thanks to some key agricultural developments such as the heavy plow and three-field crop rotation. Thereupon, Europe quickly learned what it could from other civilizations and within a few centuries advanced beyond them, particularly in technologies based on creative design, such as architecture, power machinery, mechanics, instrument-making, mining, weaponry, shipbuilding, and navigation. In these crucial fields, Europe surpassed China as if it were standing still, taking the lead between 1400 and 1500.
From about 1500, Europe had more advanced technology, greater industrial output and trade per capita, more sophisticated financial institutions, a larger labor market, higher wages, and higher literacy and book production, than did China. For several centuries longer China retained a lead in a some specialized handicrafts and some techniques based on long experience with the organic/chemical properties of specific materials, such as in agriculture and ceramics. But by the mid-18th century, the final Chinese advantages were swallowed up. Even prior to Europe’s Industrial Revolution, she was acquiring mostly raw materials from China. Meanwhile, White science marched relentlessly forward, developing more advanced instruments of investigation and drawing all of nature, large and small, into its domain. In the mid-nineteenth century, White science penetrated even into the realm of chemicals and microscopic organisms, merging with technology to create the modern world.
————
V-1. Due to its greater agricultural challenges, Europe did not urbanize until about 1000AD, allowing China a technological lead.
A. The real question of comparative history: How did China get a lead on Europe? The answer: agricultural advantage.
When Marxist academia, with its anti-White bias, compares European and Chinese history, its focus is usually on the so-called Needham Question: ‘Why did China, which led Europe technologically from the decline of the Roman Empire until about 1450, then fall behind and fail to develop modern science?’. Needham was a typical self-hating Lefty, a Sinophile, and his question assumes that Chinese are inherently as creative as Whites. The Needham Question is a quest for excuses for Chinese failure. Considering that Europe has been kicking China’s butt for 600 years, the real question, if there is one, is: How did China ever get a lead on Europe? The answer, basically, is that technological advance depends largely on urbanization, which in turn depends on high-yield agriculture, and high-yield agriculture was more difficult to attain under the environmental conditions in Europe, especially north of the Mediterranean littoral, than on the fertile alluvial plains of China. Once mainland European farmers, with a little help from the outside, managed to produce yields sufficient to support major commercial centers, Europe rapidly caught and surpassed China.
————
B. The oldest civilizations of the world are all based on floodplains, the ideal environments for agriculture.
It is certainly no accident that the first civilizations were all based on floodplains of great rivers: Mesopotamia of the Tigris-Euphrates, Ancient Egypt of the Nile, Ancient India of the Indus, and ancient China of the Yellow and Yangtze rivers. Such floodplains deposit huge amounts of highly fertile, porous, easily worked soil onto flattened ground with water at hand—ideal conditions for agriculture. The insights and tools required to initiate high-yield agriculture on such land are minimal, and the notion of controlling river water’s natural distribution via irrigation presents itself readily. China has had the largest and densest population on Earth for four millennia, because eastern China has the most arable environment on Earth.
————
C. China’s large agricultural advantages over Europe.
China had many agricultural advantages over mainland Europe. Europe’s long, harsh winters limited agriculture to one growing season, while warmer China could get two to three crops per year [1]. The great hardwood forests of Europe were difficult to clear, requiring heavy iron cutting tools [2]. Europe’s soils are thick and clayey and typically have a thick mass of roots [3], which must be broken up and turned over to release nutrients from below, requiring a heavy iron plow drawn by oxen or horses [4]. The light soil of China’s loess (and of the Mediterranean littoral) could easily be worked with light tools [5]. While China’s alluvial soil was extremely fertile [6], the lower fertility of Europe’s soil required that it be left fallow every other year and mixed with manure (requiring grazing land) in order to recover nutrients [7]. China’s river overflow provides nutrients [8], its blue-green algae sustains fertility [9], and it flattens land and kills weeds [10]. Another advantage for China is that it receives heavy monsoon rains during the optimum growing season of Summer, while Europe receives much of its precipitation during Winter [11]. Rice grown in China had a 6-10 times greater yield-to-seed ratio than European wheat [12], and only one acre of land was sufficient to support a family compared to twenty needed in Europe [13]. Chinese agriculture was labor-intensive as well as productive; however, an average family, even double-cropping rice and wheat, needed only to work for about four months during the year [14].
1. • “In this wetter, warmer clime [of southern China], mild winters and long summers permitted full double cropping: winter wheat, for example, harvested in May, and summer rice planted in June and harvested in October or November. Where conditions permitted, the Chinese went beyond this, over to rice gardening in submerged paddies. Taking quicker-growing varieties, they got three or more crops per year.” [Landes 98:26]
; See the [21] citation in the next section.
• See the [Duchesne 11a:159] citation, below.
2. • “In Europe soils are generally heavy and were then often forested… Before the iron axe, plow, hoe, and spade, it was barely possible to remove large trees or turn the soil to any depth.” [Mann 86:78]
• “[W]hy was Europe so slow to develop, thousands of years after Egypt and Sumer? The answer, again, is geography: those hardwood forests. Edmund Burke spoke well when he contrasted the Indians and the English: “a people for ages civilized and cultivated . . . while we were yet in the woods.” Not until people had iron cutting tools, in the first millennium before our era (B.C.E.), could they clear those otherwise fertile plains north of the Alps. No accident, then, that settlement of what was to become Europe took place first along lakeshores (what we know as lacustrine settlements, often on stilts) and on grasslands—not necessarily the most fertile lands, but the ones accessible to primitive, nonferrous technology.” [Landes 98:19]
• “In Europe, much of the soil is thin and chalky, or sandy, or rocky, or covered with immense hardwood forests. To produce food, the land must be heavily worked to be cleared and fertilized. This means large numbers of farm animals are essential, both for their work effort and their manure.” [Goldstein 09:9-10]
• See the [Wenke 80:542-3] citation, below.
3. • “One of the obstacles was that heavy, moist soils offer so much more resistance to a plough than does light, dry earth, that two oxen often are not able to provide enough pulling power to be effective.” [White 62:42]
• “In Europe soils are generally heavy and were then often forested. Their fertility depended on deforestation, on turning over the soil and on breaking it up. Even after the forest is removed, as any gardener in the temperate zone knows, the work of regenerating the topsoil is heavy. Before the iron ax, plow, hoe, and spade, it was barely possible to remove large trees or turn the soil to any depth.” [Mann 86:78]
• “In the absense of an arid climate or alluvial soils, it is difficult for the agriculturalist to compete with wild vegetation and renew the fertility of the soil.” [Wenke 80:545]
• “[T]he European farmer could increase his production only by plowing the heavy soils of districts that had resisted the encroachments of the light Mediterranean scratch plow.” [McClellan 06:178-9]
• “But the regions [that the Romans sought to exploit for agriculture], such as northern Gaul and Britain, were mainly places of damper climate and predominantly heavier soil, for which the agricultural techniques practised by the Romans had little to offer…” [Derry 60:23]
• “[The wheeled, iron plow] in short did wonders wherever the heavy, clayey soil resisted the older Roman wooden scratch plow, which had worked well enough on the gravelly soils of the Mediterranean basin.” [Landes 98:41-2]
• “The heavy soils of the forest regions could not be worked until the Middle Ages (from about the tenth century), when the use of new iron-tipped, heavy plows allowed farmers to churn up the old forest roots and bring fresh topsoil to the surface. But even these plows were fairly primitive, because iron was scarce and hard to shape; plows therefore had simple iron cutting shares lashed at a right angle to flat wooden (or sometimes iron) moldboards.” [Goldstein 09:10]
4. • See the [Mann 86:78] citation, above.
• “A prehistoric farmer in semiarid southern Italy needed only a few hand tools to farm successfully, but a peasant in northern Germany required capital-intensive equipment, such as the horse-drawn mouldboard plow. As Graeme Barker has observed,
‘The object of Mediterranean plowing has always been to conserve the moisture content of the soil by scuffling the surface, whereas in northern Europe heavy equipment is needed to break up the thick mass of roots in order to release the soil nutrients from the lower depths’…
Unlike that of the semiarid plains of the Middle East and the Mediterranean littoral, however, the agricultural way of life in Europe proper required clearing thick forests and grasslands, at first by cutting down the trees, later by plowing.” [Wenke 80:542-3]
• “To produce food, [European forest] land must be heavily worked to be cleared and fertilized. This means large numbers of farm animals are essential, both for their work effort and their manure. The heavy soils of the forest regions could not be worked until the Middle Ages (from about the tenth century), when the use of new iron-tipped, heavy plows allowed farmers to churn up the old forest roots and bring fresh topsoil to the surface. But even these plows were fairly primitive, because iron was scarce and hard to shape; plows therefore had simple iron cutting shares lashed at a right angle to flat wooden (or sometimes iron) moldboards. The plowshare would cut through the soil, and the moldboard would lift a ridge of soil and turn it over, creating a furrow. This cleared the soil of weeds and aerated it, allowing nitrogen to re-enter the soil. But dragging that moldboard through heavy soil was enormous work, requiring large teams of animals and often a driver to encourage the animals as well as a plowman to guide the plow.” [Goldstein 09:10]
5. • See the [Wenke 80:305,516] citation, below.
• “By contrast, [Chinese] farmers in the eastern monsoon zone had superior soils and got their wet weather in the summers… The northern Chinese plain was covered by a very light and fertile loess soil, which could be easily worked, and during the summer the high flow of the Yellow River and its tributaries provided plentiful water for irrigation.
Chinese farmers could work this soil using a lighter plow, and indeed China’s technology produced a far more efficient one.” [Goldstein 09:10-1]
• On the light scratch plow working on the gravelly soils of the Mediterranean, see the [McClellan 06:178-9], [Landes 98:41-2], and [Wenke 80:542-3] citations, above.
6. • “The alluvial soils in [the great Yellow River flood plain] are extremely fertile and sufficiently arid so that there was little vegetation to clear for agriculture in many areas. By about 4,000 B.C. scores of villages existed in north China, most of them subsisting on millet and a few other domesticates and a considerable amount of hunted and gathered food.” [Wenke 80:305]
; “North China’s developmental leadership was closely tied to its agricultural potential. Pleistocene winds blowing off the Gobi Desert covered parts of north China with a layer of loess (a fine grain sediment) that reached a depth of several hundred meters. The Huanghe (or “Yellow River”—a color given it by the loess it carries) cuts through these loess plains, frequently changing its course, and through flooding and draining it has created a rich agricutural zone of lakes, marshes, and alluvial fields. Loess is the agricultural soil par excellence: it is organically rich, requires little plowing, and retains near the surface much of the sparse rain that falls on North China. Moreover, it can yield large crops with little fertilization, even under intensive cultivation. The southern alluvial plains, with their hot, humid climate, eventually became the great rice heartlands.” [516]
• “[T]he loess of China had a “self-fertilizing capacity”. The crucial element in the productive capacity of the loess was for the land to conserve moisture. As long as farmers maintained this moisture, crops could be raised continuously on the same unit of land without fertilizing additions. Ping-Ti Ho thus concludes that “it was largely nature, more specifically the loess,” which shaped the “self-sustaining character” of the northern agricultural system (56).” [Duchesne 11a:162]
7. • “There was always a part of [European] land lying fallow. This part had to be fertilized with manure, and the main source of manure was livestock, which meant that if the fertility of the land was to be retained, more land had to be reserved for horses and cattle, as grasslands at the expense of arable land.” [Duchesne 11a:161]
• “[Farm animals for Europe’s wheat agriculture] also are indispensable in transport and especially as providers of manure, without which one cannot even maintain let alone increase the fertility of the soil.” [Vries 13:180]
• “[B]ecause [European] soils were poor and animals needed to be fed, almost two-thirds of the available land had to be left unplanted to provide grazing or held in a fallow or “resting” period for a year between plantings to improve soil fertility.
By contrast, [Chinese] farmers in the eastern monsoon zone had superior soils…
Chinese farmers thus did not need to devote much land to grazing, nor did they need to rest any land in fallows, because irrigation and light manuring (usually from pigs) carried the needed nutrients into the light but deep soils. Even though the northern Chinese plain grew crops similar to those of Europe—wheat, millet, and beans—the Chinese were able to produce more food per acre and per farmer, to feed more craft and urban workers, and to support more and larger cities than Europeans could.” [Goldstein 09:10-1]
; “In addition, because flooding the fields helped fertilize the soil and keep down weeds, and far less animal power was needed for plowing, rice cultivation needed no fallow period and required little land for grazing.” [11]
8. • “In the river valleys, the ecology is of obvious importance… But, in general, the decisive point is that the river in flood bears mud and silt, which when deposited is fertilized soil. This is called the alluvium. If it can be diverted onto a broad area of existing land, then much higher crop yields can be expected. This is the significance of irrigation in the ancient world: the spreading of water and silt over the land. Rain-watered soils gave lower yields.” [Mann 86:78]
9. • “[B]ehind the striking productive capacity of wet-rice farming is the natural stability or durability of this grain to produce two harvests per year, year after year, without causing any decreases in the fertility of the soil. Even after long years without fertilization, the fertility of the soil does not show any signs of deterioration. The answer to this puzzle, writes Geertz, lies in the nutrients which the irrigation of water brings: in the fixation of nitrogen by the blue-green algae which proliferate in the warm water.” [Duchesne 11a:159]
10. • “In addition, because flooding the fields helped fertilize the soil and keep down weeds, and far less animal power was needed for plowing, rice cultivation needed no fallow period and required little land for grazing.” [Goldstein 09:11]
11. • “[B]ecause it had a topography that had higher elevation in the west and lower elevation in the east, and because the precipitation brought by the monsoon from the Pacific Ocean concentrated between March and October when the light and heat conditions were favorable, the land in China could produce highly-productive grains to support larger population…” [Lin 08:11]
• “To sum up, Europe’s weather comes mainly from air patterns over the Atlantic, giving it cool wet winters and dry summers… In eastern and southern Asia, by contrast, the weather is driven by seasonally shifting winds. The most striking feature of the latter is the monsoon season, when summer winds coming from the Pacific and Indian Oceans drop warm, heavy rains throughout the region…
Because most rain in Europe falls in the winter, not in the summer growing season, farmers need to plant crops that are hardy. Europeans thus planted crops like barley and wheat, oats and beans and millet, as their main food source…
By contrast, farmers in the eastern monsoon zone had superior soils and got their wet weather in the summers…
In India, southern China, southeastern Asia, and the southern parts of Japan and Korea, the monsoons dropped so much water that farmers could flood their fields in the growing season and grow the more productive and water-tolerant crop of rice…” [Goldstein 09:9-11]
12. • “The seed-yield ratios of Europe were naturally inferior to China’s: rice always produced higher yields per seed sown than wheat. As Braudel observes, “wheat’s unpardonable fault was its low yield… Wherever one looks, from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, the results were disappointing. For every grain sown, the harvest was unusually no more than five and sometimes less” (1981: 120). While the average seed-to-yield ratio in medieval Sung China was already quite outstanding at 1:20 or even at 1:30, the average wheat ratio in England over the modern period 1500–1700 was 1:7.” [Duchesne 11a:161]
• “For unhusked rice in a technically advanced area of China in the middle of the eighteenth century, the yield-to-seed ratio was between 45 to 51, or about 9 to 10 times greater than that in most of northwestern Europe for wheat. Wheat is of course a very different cereal, in different climatic conditions, and not irrigated. Most Chinese ate husked rice, however, and $the yield-to-seed ratio for unhusked seeds to husked edible grains was between 31 and 36, or between 6 and 7 times more than western Europe, which is still large but not so dramatic.” [Elvin 0x:2]
• “Rice plants have many more seeds or kernels per plant than wheat; thus much less of the crop had to be kept for seeding the next harvest, and more edible food could be harvested per acre.” [Goldstein 09:11]
13. • “The point is that in a rice economy it is easier to survive on a tiny plot as well as less easy to survive without one. If one mobilised the working power of every member of the household and took up the various possibilities to earn extra income that China’s rice agriculture presented, a piece of land that in the West would be considered as not much more than a garden, could suffice as a basis for subsistence.” [Vries 13:181]
• “[W]et rice farming can sustain long term deterioration in the person/land ratio, because a unit of rice land naturally yields far more than a unit of wheat land – this is so because it responds “very positively to increased care and especially to increased inputs of labor,” as Bray puts it. This explains why rice paddies have an enormous ability to feed an ever-increasing number of farmers from the same unit of land.” [Duchesne 11a:160]
• “In East Asia an acre of land was enough to support a family, such was the efficiency of rice cultivation, whereas in England the average figure was closer to twenty acres.” [Ferguson 11:26]
14. • “[Rice agriculture in China] has a very high yield per unit of land, far higher than wheat, with the extra advantage that in growing rice there is no need to let land lie fallow. On top of that, at least in the right climate, several varieties of rice can be inserted in all kinds of systems of multi-cropping and inter-cropping. One can have two or even more harvests per year of rice or, normally, of rice and some other crop. Yields react very positively to irrigation and fertiliser. The extra labour required for constructing, maintaining and using irrigation systems and collecting, preparing and spreading all kinds of fertiliser, pays off. Even tiny tracts of land can suffice to feed a family.
It is tempting to think that a type of cultivation that is as land-intensive as growing rice must also be labour-intensive. Preparing, manuring, irrigating and draining the fields, planting, transplanting, weeding, harvesting, husking and milling the rice, to mention the most obvious activities involved, involve a lot of hard work. But the labour-intensity of the crop must not be exaggerated. An average family, double-cropping, growing rice and wheat, on an average-sized farm in the Lower Yangzi, still only could be efficiently employed for about four months per year. In those months, they had to work very hard and often were short of labour. But during the rest of the year it was underemployed or even unemployed, if it did not take up other activities.” [Vries 13:178-9]
————
D. China was well urbanized by about 1000BC.
Because of its agricultural advantages, China produced a much higher population than did Europe [1], and its early population was concentrated in a relatively small area on the North China Plain around the Yellow River [2]. By 1500BC, large towns and cities had formed from its thousands of villages, ruled by the Shang dynasty. They had palaces and courts, a written language and records, large public-works projects, and large-scale, specialized industries in metallurgy, ceramics, etc. [3]. China’s urban society evolved over time, undergoing some revolutions and gradually becoming more sophisticated [4]. This evolution culminated in China’s “golden age of philosophy” at 600-200 BC [5], followed by its imperial era that lasted until the 20th century. By 0 AD, China had a population of about 60 million as against a few million Northwest European Whites, who would eventually drive Europe’s technological ascension.
1. • “The fact is that the world’s premodern urban history has been chiefly a Chinese phenomenon. In 1800, the population of the world was about one billion, of which four percent lived in cities of over ten thousand residents. One-third, if not fully one-half, of these urban dwellers lived in China, a proportion that has obtained for two thousand years (see Rozman, 1973). Cities did not originate in China, but in China they most proliferated.” [Stover 76:86]
• “The very scarcity of large expanses of alluvial delta and river valley [in Europe], combined with lower temperatures in the growing season, meant that agricultural productivity was less than in the orient.” [Jones 87:226]
• “This is not to say that European crop yields per area or population densities were higher than those in warm irrigation societies. The gains from animal fertilizer, plowing (which brings nutrients up from below), and fallow could not match the fertile silt of the Nile, the Euphrates, or the Indus; even less, the alluvial deposits of the Yellow and Yangtze rivers, and the multiple cropping made possible by year-round warmth.* …[T]he demand for labor in the rainy season and the big yields of wet cultivation promoted high densities of population—30 times that of Africa per unit of arable, 40 times that of Europe…
*The Yangtze alone deposits more silt than the Nile, Amazon, and Mississippi combined; and the Yellow River deposits three times that of the Yangtze.” [Landes 98:21]
; “Some two thousand years ago, perhaps 60 million people crowded what was to become the northern edge of China—a huge number for a small territory. This number more or less held over the next millennium, but then, from about the tenth to the beginning of the thirteenth
century, almost doubled, to around 120 million.” [23]
• “During Han times (206BC–220AD), when settlement to the still-to-be cultivated rice lands of the Lower Yangzi was in the early stages, and the inhabitants were concentrated in the central and lower valleys of the Yellow River, the official census of AD 2 recorded a population of 58 million. The population of Europe to the Ural Mountains, by contrast, was 26 million in AD 600… As [Chinese] farmers migrated southwards, and wet-rice agriculture expanded steadily in the Yangzi Delta, and new varieties of early ripening rice were introduced, the population reached about 120 million by the early 1200s.” [Duchesne 11a:162-3]
; “[I]n Europe, in 1000 AD, the proportion of the population living in towns with more than 10,000 inhabitants was next to zero (there were only 4 towns with more than 10,000 inhabitants), whereas in China it was 3 percent.” [152]
• “With limited crop rotation and fertilization [in Medieval Europe], fields had to lay fallow every third or second year, drastically reducing the productivity of the land. “Only half or two-thirds of the arable land was under crop in any one season.” Agricultural methods “were always crude, and were often very cumbersome and wasteful … many of the stock had to be killed before winter, as there was no proper fodder to keep them.” The only winter fodder that was available was hay cut from the meadows. Because most of the livestock had to be slaughtered in the fall, there was never much manure available to fertilize the fields.
Agricultural commerce was limited by the simple fact that there was little to no surplus to trade. If there was a surplus of agricultural production one year, it went to waste, while bad weather the next year could very well lead to famine.” [Deming 10:114]
• “The population of China more than doubled from 50 million in 800 ce to 115 million (one census reports 123 million) in 1200. The center of gravity of Chinese civilization shifted south, with more than twice as many Chinese living in the south than the north by 1080. Urbanization likewise skyrocketed. According to one report, Song Dynasty China contained five cities with populations of more than a million, and another estimate puts the urban population at 20 percent of the total, a remarkably high figure for an agrarian society, one not reached in Europe until the nineteenth century.” [McClellan 06:119]
• “Even though the northern Chinese plain grew crops similar to those of Europe—wheat, millet, and beans—the Chinese were able to produce more food per acre and per farmer, to feed more craft and urban workers, and to support more and larger cities than Europeans could…
The methods of rice farming and the properties of rice thus allowed for higher productivity than did European farming, leading to greater output per person and per acre in Asia. This greater output allowed Asian societies to support a larger class of cultured and leisured elites, and to engage more craftspeople to produce specialized products for consumption and trade.” [Goldstein 09:11]
• “Although the populations of the two empires were roughly of the same magnitudes, there were far fewer Roman soldiers than soldiers in the Chinese Han Europe. The scale of Chinese peasant wars in Middle Ages was comparable to those of world wars in industrialized society. The technical possibility of storing grain from intensive agriculture made possible the logistic support possible to maintain a standing army of many millions of soldiers in China, while the Roman army had difficulty storing enough meat and dairy food for even hundreds of thousands of men in a mixed agriculture.” [Chen 90:5-6]
2. • “The population of China has always exceeded that of Europe at the corresponding date. Densities in the settled regions bear no comparison, since ninety-six percent of the Chinese total is located in less than twenty-five percent of the area.” [Jones 87:212]
• See the [Landes 98:23] citation, above.
3. • “After about 2000BC, large towns and cities began to replace or emerge from the tens of thousands of villages that marked earlier, simpler times. During the second millennium B.C. China really became “China,” in the sense that this period marked the first widespread use of the distinctively Chinese forms of writing, architecture, art, and ideology. Also during this period all the correlates of cultural complexity, such as monumental architecture, large population concentrations, occupational specialization, written records, gross differences in wealth, power, and prestige, and large public-works projects, appeared in full measure.” [Wenke 80:523; see 523-9]
• “The earliest cities in the world originated in West Asia in 3000 B.C. and influenced urban development everywhere from Egypt to India. Chinese cities originated between 1700 and 1500 B.C., but not as copies of Mesopotamian ones… The rural-urban relationship was expressed not in city as compared with countryside but instead as a network of specialized communities that included a number of farming villages, which supported everything. Other community types in this network were hamlets specializing in bronze metallurgy, bone work, jade, and ceramics. The organizational headquarters for all this was the royal community, with its palace buildings and temples surrounded by a wall… At Cheng-chou (Ao), the palace complex was surrounded by a rectangular wall of pounded earth 1.3 miles in circumference, thirty feet high, and sixty feet across at the base. The labor required to construct this wall has been estimated… at a minimum of 180,000 man-years.” [Stover 76:37]
• Shang dynasty.
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shang_dynasty
4. • Zhou dynasty
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhou_dynasty
Eastern Zhou Period
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Zhou_Period
Spring and Autumn period
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_and_Autumn_period
Warring States period
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warring_States_period
5. • Hundred Schools of Thought
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Schools_of_Thought
————
E. Urbanization is a boon to technological progress.
Of course, the urbanization generated by high-yield agriculture and dense population is a boon to technological progress [1]. In the first place, it means more tradable foodstuffs and other agricultural products, more workers and (wealthy) consumers, and therefore more commerce in general [2]. Craftsmen, artists, and merchants become freer to specialize in their particular fields, and, with capital, resources, and customers close at hand, enjoy lower transportation and other transaction costs, and economies of scale [3]. Greater economic activity engenders greater organization in industry and government along with the creation of the infrastructure and tools needed to manage it: roads and bridges, buildings and machines, laws, record-keeping, finance (currency), mathematics, etc [4].
1. • “[T]he land in China could produce highly-productive grains to support larger population, if right farming tools and technologies were applied (Temple, 1986). Because of this, Chinese population had been far larger than that of Europe. Such a larger population put China in an advantageous position in the development of technologies in pre-modern periods.” [Lin 08:11]
2. • “The saving of peasant labor, then, together with the improvement of field drainage and the opening up of the most fertile soils, all of which were made possible by the heavy plough, combined to expand production and make possible that accumulation of surplus food which is the presupposition of population growth, specialization of function, urbanization, and the growth of leisure.” [White 62:43-4]
; “The increased returns from the labor of the northern peasant [due to the agricultural revolution of the Middle Ages] raised his standard of living and consequently his ability to buy manufactured goods. It provided surplus food which, from the tenth century on, permitted rapid urbanization. In the new cities there arose a class of skilled artisans and merchants, the burghers who speedily got control of their communities and created a novel and characteristic way of life, democratic capitalism.” [78]
• “Only later [after clearing forests and devloping agricultural technology] could Europe grow enough food to sustain denser populations and the surpluses that support urban centers of cultural exchange and development.” [Landes 98:19]
3. • “This greater [agricultural] output allowed Asian societies to support a larger class of cultured and leisured elites, and to engage more craftspeople to produce specialized products for consumption and trade.” [Goldstein 09:11]
4. • “Agriculture allowed for much higher population densities, so that, instead of living in communities of twenty to fifty, people now lived in communities of hundreds to thousands. By 2500 BC the cities of Sumeria are estimated to already have been as large as forty thousand people. Agrarian societies also had large stocks of assets that were owned by specific people: land, houses, and animals. The sizes of these societies allowed the extensive use of money as a medium of exchange. Their size, and the importance of the income streams from these assets, created a need for enduring records of property ownership and property transfers. Thus a mass of clay tablets recording leases, sales, wills, and labor contracts survive from ancient Sumeria and Babylonia…
Literacy and numeracy, previously irrelevant, were now both helpful for achieving economic success in agrarian preindustrial economies…
Trade and production in turn also helped stimulate innovations in arithmetic and writing systems designed to make calculations and recording easier. The replacement of Roman numerals by Arabic numerals in Europe, for example, was aided by the demands of trade and commerce…
So the market nature of settled agrarian societies stimulated intellectual life in two ways. It created a demand for better symbolic systems to handle commerce and production. And it created a supply of people who were adept at using these systems for economic ends.” [Clark 07a:184-6]
• “Needham attributes Chinese technological leadership to the strong bureaucratic government that ruled China beginning with the country’s first unification under the Ch’in dynasty in the third century B.C. Most of China’s engineers and master mechanics were either directly employed or closely supervised by administrative authorities. Complex machines, such as the early water mill, could be developed only under government sponsorship. The same was true of large-scale engineering projects, of which the most famous was the Great Wall…” [Gies 94:85]
————
F. The classical Greco-Roman world surpassed China despite being only a periphery of Europe, dependent on grain imports from Africa.
The Classical Greco-Roman world with a brilliant spurt of creativity surpassed China for a few centuries [1], though it was mainly a Mediterranean civilization rather than a European one. Its empires were led by Indo-European conquerors from the north [2], and fell apart after their relatively small leadership class dispersed and was eroded by integration and immigration [3]. Rome’s creative effort was directed primarily toward effective management of the empire: administration and law, engineering and architecture, language and literature [4]. The Roman empire’s capital and base in Italy depended heavily on grain imports from North Africa and control of Mediterranean trade in general [5]. Mainland Europe was still mostly a wilderness, supplying the empire with some raw materials and ‘human resources’ in the form of stout soldiers.
1. • “The Greek discovery of logos, reasoned discourse and its link with the order of the world, the concept of natural law, the Greek invention of prose, tragedy, politics, and face-to-face infantry battle were already unique developments. The Roman creation of a secular system of governance anchored on autonomous principles of judicial reasoning was in and of itself a divergence.” [Duchesne 11c:380]
; “[W]hat Lloyd himself says elsewhere about the deep scientific difference of the Greeks: “They were certainly not the first to develop a complex mathematics – only the first to use, and then also to give a formal analysis of, a concept of rigorous demonstration. They were not the first to carry out careful observations in astronomy and medicine, only the first – eventually – to develop an explicit notion of empirical research and to debate its role in natural science. They were not the first to diagnose and treat some medical cases without reference to postulated divine or daemonic agencies, only the first to express a category of the ‘magical’ and to attempt to exclude it from medicine”.” [Duchesne 11a:252]
; “[No] strong or consensual argument has yet been produced in response to why ancient Greece “discovered the mind,” discovered the method of causal science, invented the literary form of tragedy, prose writing, and tapped into the progressive spirit of critical reason.” [313]
; “[T]he Greeks “discovered” naturalistic philosophy (the Ionians), tragedy (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides), comedy (Aristophanes, Menander), history (Herodotus, Thucydides), rhetoric (Isocrates), oratory (the Sophists), and dialectical inquiry (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle)…” [452]
; “The Hellenistic kingdoms… contributed major ideas in the sciences (Euclid, Archimedes, Eratosthenes) and in philosophical reflection: the Epicureans, the Stoics, and the Cynics…” [459]
• “The major areas for which the Greeks and Romans became famous were in civil and hydraulic engineering and in architecture. The Roman Empire… brought public-good engineering to great heights, although most of its engineering feats, including roads and aqueducts, utilized existing technology. The supply of Rome with water was begun by Appius Claudius in 312 B.C, and the system reached unprecedented complexity by the first and second centuries A.D. Sewage and garbage disposal were also highly developed. A system of central heating was developed for use in both homes and bathhouses…
Equally important in Roman engineering was the infrastructure of land transport: the roads and bridges built by the Romans are justly admired as one of their greatest achievements. Much of their success here was due to their discovery of cement masonry… In bridges and aqueducts, the Romans used the revolutionary technique of weight-supported arches or pillars made of cement. Some of their aqueducts, such as the famous Pont du Gard near Nimes, have survived [to today].
Another area in which technical ingenuity improved efficiency in the public sector was in the construction of war machines…” [Mokyr 90:20-1]
• “There had already been some vital scientific seeds in Hellenic civilization. Thumbing through the books of Euclid, Archimedes, Apollonius, an other ancient mathematicians – rendered into modern notation – one cannot help but being struck by their scientific modernity and unvarnished professionalism. Yet when we try hard to make sense of the propositions on mechanics and geometrical optics in the roughly contemporaneous Mohist Canons, we find ourselves more often than not in a hopeless quandry.” [Qian 85:47]
• “The constant-flow clepsydra may have been invented by Ctesibius (fl. 270 B.C.) in Alexandria. Ctesibius’ inventions were described by Vitruvius (c. 30 B.C.), who noted that Ctesibius began the construction of his water clocks “by making an orifice in a piece of gold, or by perforating a gem, because these substances are not worn by the action of water, and do not collect dirt so as to get stopped up.”
The water clock was certainly in use in Rome by the second century B.C. or earlier. In De Natura Deorum (Of the Nature of the Gods), Cicero (106–43 B.C.) wrote, “when you see a [sun]dial or water-clock, you believe the hours are showed by art, and not by chance.” The clepsydra was accurate enough to be useful in many situations.” [Deming 10:175]
2. • “The first Indo-Europeans who founded the “civilized” West (and started to leave the state of nature) were the Mycenaean warriors who comprised the background to classical Athens. The second were the Macedonians who rejuvenated the martial virtues of Greece after the debilitating Peloponnesian War, and went on to conquer Persia and create the basis for the intellectual harvest of Alexandrian Greece. The third were the early Romans who founded an aristocratic republic, preserved the legacy of Greece, and cultivated their own Latin tradition.” [Duchesne 11a:462]
• “In any discussion of the physical anthropology of Indo-European speakers we must immediately recognize that whatever genetic unity the PIE speakers may have possessed, the speakers of the subsequent variety of IE languages represented a relatively diverse variety of peoples from a racial or genetic point of view, following the successive waves of IE expansion which carried Indo-European speech to the Atlantic and the Bay of Bengal. In the course of some five or six millennia of expansion and conquest, an expanding IE upper caste may undoubtedly have preserved a high degree of genetic continuity (Pearson, 1974), while simply superimposing itself upon the autochthonous populations. Those who brought Indo-European speech into the newly-colonized territories became a ruling warrior nobility, as testified by the connotation ‘noble’ for arya in India and Persia, ariothez, in Greece (hence our ‘aristocracy’) and aire among the Celtic peoples…
It would thus seem probable that the successive waves of Indo-Europeans who settled the Aegean, commencing in the Helladic period at the start of the 2nd millennium B.C. and concluding with the Dorian invasions of the 11th century B.C., exercised a very substantial genetic influence on the population of that area. However, attempts to make a general statement about changes in the physical anthropology of the Aegean have been handicapped by the fact that the heavily caste-like social stratification imposed by the Indo-European Eupatrid classes prevented the establishment of a single Aegean gene pool and resulted in the perpetuation of a variety of racial sub-types…
Several attempts have been made to discuss the physical anthropology of Greece from the point of view ol the available skeletal evidence. Some early references were made by pioneers such as… have added considerable information. In his most recent work on the subject, a detailed analysis of the numerous skeletal remains found in different cemeteries in the excavations at Lerna, Angel (1971) concludes that the immigrant Hellenic or Indo-European population reflected a ‘Nordic’ type which probably arrived from the Danubian area, and also a related ‘Iranic’ type. This latter appears to reflect a separate Indo-European invasion from the direction of Anatolia, although Angel assumes that both these related types originated ultimately from the area of the Pontic steppes…” [Peterson 74]
• There is a lot of evidence that in the classical Greco-Roman world blonds were much more prevalent than they are there in modern times. This does not necessarily mean that these people were equivalents of modern Nordics.
What Race Were the Greeks and Romans?
The evidence is clear — but often ignored
• www.unz.com/article/what-race-were-the-greeks-and-romans/
Like a Greek God.
• www.theapricity.com/earlson/hfkg/greek.htm
Nordic Hellas.
• www.armahellas.com/?p=120
Pigmentation of the Early Roman Emperors
• www.theapricity.com/earlson/history/emperors.htm
3. • “Unfortunately, most of the sociological and political data of the empire are provided by satirists. When Tacitus informs us that in Nero’s day a great many of Rome’s senators and knights were descendants of slaves and that the native stock had dwindled to surprisingly small proportions, we are not sure whether we are not to take it as an exaggerated thrust by an indignant Roman of the old stock… To discover some new light upon these fundamental questions of Roman history, I have tried to gather such fragmentary data as the corpus of inscriptions might afford. This evidence is never decisive in its purport, and it is always, by the very nature of the material, partial in its scope, but at any rate it may help us to interpret our literary sources to some extent. It has at least convinced me that Juvenal and Tacitus were not exaggerating. It is probable that when these men wrote a very small percentage of the free plebeians on the streets of Rome could prove unmixed Italian descent. By far the larger part—perhaps ninety per cent—had Oriental blood in their veins.” [Frank 16]
; “Therefore, when the urban inscriptions show that seventy per cent of the city slaves and freedmen bear Greek names and that a larger portion of the children who have Latin names have parents of Greek names, this at once implies that the East was the source of most of them, and with that inference Bang’s conclusions (Dr. Bang of Germany) entirely agree. In his list of slaves that specify their origin as being outside Italy (during the empire), by far the larger portion came from the Orient, especially from Syria and the provinces of Asia Minor, with some from Egypt and Africa (which for racial classification may be taken with the Orient). Some are from Spain and Gaul, but a considerable portion of these came originally from the East. Very few slaves are recorded from the Alpine and Danube provinces, while Germans rarely appear, except among the imperial bodyguard. Bang remarks that Europeans were of greater service to the empire as soldiers than servants. This is largely true, but, as Strack has commented, the more robust European war-captives were apt to be chosen for the gruelling work in the mines and in industry, and consequently they have largely vanished from the records. Such slaves were probably also the least productive [of offspring] of the class; and this, in turn, helps to explain the strikingly Oriental aspect of the new population.” [Frank 16]
; “In order to get more specific evidence regarding the nature of the population in the West, free as well as servile, we may read the sepulchral inscriptions of some typical towns and districts…
[T]he trend is evident in what we have given, and the figures are, I think, fairly representative of the whole. In these towns, as at Rome, the proportion of non-Latin folk is strikingly large. Slaves, freedmen and citizens of Greek name make up more than half the population, despite the fact that in the nature of the case these are presumably the people least likely to be adequately represented in inscriptions. Furthermore, if the Latin names of freedmen in half the instances conceal persons of Oriental parentage, as they do in the city, the Easterner would be represented by classes 2 and 4, half of class 1, and a part of class 3. How strikingly un-Latin these places must have appeared to those who saw the great crowd of humble slaves, who were buried without ceremony or record in nameless trenches! Yet here are the Marsi, proverbially the hardiest native stock of the Italian mountains; Beneventum, one of Rome’s old frontier colonies; Milan and Padua, that drew Latins and Romanized Celts from the richest agricultural districts of the Po valley; the old colony of Narbo, the home of Caesar’s famous Tenth Legion—the city that Cicero called specula populi Romani; and four cities at the western end of the empire. If we may, as I think fair, infer for these towns what we found to be true at Rome, namely, that slaves were quite as prolific as the civil population, that they merged into the latter, and that Greek names betokened Oriental stock, it is evident that the whole empire was a melting-pot and that the Oriental was always and everywhere a very large part of the ore.” [Frank 16]
; “[O]ne asks, without hope of a sufficient answer, why the native stock did not better hold its own. Yet there are at hand not a few reasons. We know for instance that when Italy had been devastated by Hannibal and a large part of its population put to the sword, immense bodies of slaves were bought up in the East to fill the void; and that during the second century, when the plantations ystem with its slave service was coming into vogue, the natives were pushed out of the small farms and many disappeared to the provinces of the ever-expanding empire. Thus, during the thirty years before Tiberius Gracchus, the census statistics show no increase. During the first century B.C., the importation of captives and slaves continued, while the free-born citizens were being wasted in the social, Sullan, and civil wars. Augustus affirms that he had had half a million citizens under arms, one-eighth of Rome’s citizens, and that the most vigorous part. During the early empire, twenty to thirty legions, drawn of course from the best free stock, spent their twenty years of vigor in garrison duty, while the slaves, exempt from such services, lived at home and increased in number. In other words, the native stock was supported by less than a normal birth-rate, whereas the stock of foreign extraction had not only a fairly normal birth-rate but a liberal quota of manumissions to its advantage…
Juvenal, satirist though he is, may be giving a fact of some social importance when he writes that the poor bore all the burdens of family life, while the rich remained childless…
The legislation of Augustus and his successors, while aimed at preserving the native stock, was of the myopic kind so usual in social law-making, and, failing to reckon with the real nature of the problem involved, it utterly missed the mark. By combining epigraphical and literary references, a fairly full history of the noble families can be procured, and this reveals a startling inability of such families to perpetuate themselves. We know, for instance, in Caesar’s day of forty-five patricians, only one of whom is represented by posterity when Hadrian came to power. The Aemilii, Fabii, Claudii, Manlii, Valerii, and all the rest, with the exception of the Cornelii, have disappeared. Augustus and Claudius raised twenty-five families to the patriciate, and all but six of them disappear before Nerva’s reign. Of the families of nearly four hundred senators recorded in 65 A.D. under Nero, all trace of a half is lost by Nerva’s day, a generation later. And the records are so full that these statistics may be assumed to represent with a fair degree of accuracy the disappearance of the male stock of the families in question. Of course members of the aristocracy were the chief sufferers from the tyranny of the first century, but this havoc was not all wrought by delatores and assassins. The voluntary choice of childlessness accounts largely for the unparalleled condition. This is as far as the records help upon this problem, which, despite the silence, is probably the most important phase of the whole question of the change of race. Be the causes what they may, the rapid decrease of the old aristocracy and the native stock was clearly concomitant with a twofold increase from below: by a more normal birth-rate of the poor, and the constant manumission of slaves.” [Frank 16]
; “This Orientalizing of Rome’s populace has a more important bearing than is usually accorded it upon the larger question of why the spirit and acts of imperial Rome are totally different from those of the republic, if indeed racial characteristics are not wholly a myth. There is today a healthy activity in the study of the economic factors—unscientific finance, fiscal agriculture, inadequate support of industry and commerce, etc.—that contributed to Rome’s decline. But what lay behind and constantly reacted upon all such causes of Rome’s disintegration was, after all, to a considerable extent, the fact that the people who built Rome had given way to a different race. The lack of energy and enterprise, the failure of foresight and common sense, the weakening of moral and political stamina, all were concomitant with the gradual diminution of the stock which, during the earlier days, had displayed these qualities… It is apparent that at least the political and moral qualities which counted most in the building of the Italian federation, the army organization, the provincial administrative system of the republic, were the qualities most needed in holding the empire together. And however brilliant the endowment of the new citizens, these qualities they lacked. The Trimalchios of the empire were often shrewd and daring business men, but their first and obvious task apparently was to climb by the ladder of quick profits to a social position in which their children with Romanized names could comfortably proceed to forget their forebears. The possession of wealth did not, as in the republic, suggest certain duties toward the commonwealth.” [Frank 16]
• Historian Nilsson reviews extreme efforts by Roman state to increase birth rate of citizens, especially in upper classes [Nilsson 21:373-4], and describes how the old noble families died out. He explains how it became difficult to recruit for the army, particularly its elite corps, from the stock of original citizens [374-5]. He reviews the demise and replacement of Rome’s vigorous founders: “In some cases it is possible to show whence the men came who took the places of the Roman elements of the population. The old Roman nobility had been severely dealt with in the proscriptions at the end of the Republic. Augustus tried earnestly to save what was left, but without succes. The old families died out in the first century A.D. The correspondents of Pliny the younger do not bear the’ old famous names. In their stead provincials enter the senate, at first from the most Romanised provinces, Southern Spain (Baetica), South-East France (Gallia Narbonensis), later on from Africa (Tunis), and Asia Minor. The first consuls who originated from Spain appear in the last years of the Republic and were followed by several others during the first, century A.D., the first consul from Gallia Narbonensis is found in the reign of Tiberius, the first from Africa and Syria in the reigns of Vespasian and Domitian respectively. From Trajan onwards even the emperors were provincials. Trajan and his successor Hadrian were Spaniards, Antoninus Pius belonged to a Gallic and Marcus Aurelius to a Spanish family, Septimius Severus was a native of Africa, his successors were Syrians. It was difficult for a man belonging to the Greek portion of the Empire to attain a high position, because a knowledge of Latin and Roman law was needed for this, and such a knowledge was not common in the East, which prided itself on its own ancient culture. Nevertheless after the reign of Hadrian numbers of Orientals appear in high places; the western world seems almost to be worn out.” [374]
; “The mixed character of the population of the capital is attested by many ancient authors. We can hardly imagine the extent of the admixture; only Constantinople, the most cosmopolitan city of the world, can give us an idea of it. Cicero calls Rome a city created by the confluence of the nations, four centuries later the emperor Constantius wondered at the haste with which all the peoples flowed together to Rome. Lucan, the poet and friend of Nero, says that Rome was populated not by its own citizens but by the scum of the world. The Oriental element seems to have been very conspicuous. A famous passage in Juvenal states that the poet cannot like this Graecised Rome, but that the least part of the scum is composed of Greeks: the Syrian Orontes has flowed into the Tiber, with foreign languages and foreign manners.
The Jewish population was considerable. In the year 4 B.C. it is said that 8,000 Jews accompanied a deputation to the Emperor. Tiberius turned them out and deported 4,000 to Sardinia, but when Claudius some years later wished to do the same, they had become so numerous that the plan could not be carried out…
In ancient times the Jews were not merchants and bankers as now. In the last two centuries B.C. we find many Italian merchants in the East. They were especially bankers and slave- and corn-merchants, and their trade depended on the power of Rome. But when the abuses in the provinces were repressed by the emperors, the Italians disappeared and their places were taken by the provincials. The real merchants were the Syrians, who had important factories in Italy and who appear in every province. They were numerous e.g. in Gaul, where even in the sixth century they were organized into separate Christian churches, at least in Paris and Orleans. Salvian mentions the hosts of Syrian merchants who have inundated all the towns and think only of lies and falsehood. The merchants of Italy were not Romans by birth. They were enfranchised slaves, who in this manner had obtained the citizenship. ” [375-6]
; “A discussion that took place in the senate in the reign of Nero is very illuminating. It was said that the enfranchised slaves were numerous, they crowded the tribuses and the inferior positions in the state, most of the knights and many of the senators were descendants of freedmen. If the freedmen were turned out, there would be a lack of free citizens.
The freedmen formed a very important part of the population in the earlier centuries of the Empire. It is a burning question whence they originated. A preliminary matter is, which slaves were enfranchised? Those, naturally, who personally attended on their masters and had charge of his business. The slaves of the farms were not valued much more than the beasts of burden and had little better prospect of being enfranchised. For attending on the master and managing his business no mere barbarians were fit; some civilization, such as was found among the able Orientals, was required.
An examination of the statements of the inscriptions concerning the nationalities of the slaves shows that this is true. They corroborate the old saying that the Syrians were a people of born slaves. Most numerous after the Syrians are the Graecised inhabitants of Asia Minor and the Jews. More than half the workers of the Italian potteries have Greek or Oriental names, and the names of the artitisans of other crafts convey the same impression. Next in numerical importance come the Egyptians and Ethiopians, but in the case of these peoples the external differences were so great that they never became so perilous as the other races mentioned. In Europe no people was predestined to slavery, although some, but not many, slaves originated from European countries. The barbarians of Europe went into the army instead. For instance only two Pannonians are mentioned as slaves, but men of this race crowded into the army. The importation of slaves and the enfranchisement brought in Orientals more especially, and to this fact is largely due the orientalism which is a prominent feature of the later Empire.” [376-7]
; “What has been set forth as to this point may convey the impression that an inverted selection took place, and in reality there was something like it. The peoples that had created the ancient culture and the Roman Empire diminished in number, and the gaps were filled up by provincials. This process led to a sinking of the culture, in proportion as the less civilized provincials ousted the old citizens, and lessened the coherence of the Empire, which depended on the people that had created it.” [378]
• “One of the most serious evils with which the imperial government was called upon to contend was the decline in population. Not only had the Italian stock almost disappeared from the towns, but the descendants of freedmen had not been born in sufficient numbers to take its place. Accordingly, while the Lex Papia Poppaea offered privileges to freeborn citizens for the possession of three children, it used the whole question of inheritances of freedmen and freedwomen for the encouragement of procreation.” [Duff 28:191]
; “Reasons may be given for the coming of the foreigner, but at the same time some explanation may be demanded for the disappearance of the native. In the first place there was a marked decline in the birth-rate among the anstocratic classes. These latterwere the chief sufferers from the prescriptions of the Republic and the capricious tyranny of early emperors. But it was the increase of luxury that was most effective in deleting old Roman families from the records. As society grew more and more pleasure-loving, as convention raised artificially the standard of living, the voluntary choice of celibacy and childlessness became a common feature among the upper classes. Of forty-five patrician families in Caesar’s day, all save one were extinct by the reign of Hadrian. Augustus and Claudius found it necessary to reinforce the patrician order with twenty-five plebeian houses. Of these only six survived till Nerva’s reign.
But what of the lower-class Romans of the old stock? They were practically untouched by revolution and tyranny, and the growth of luxury cannot have affected them to the same extent as it did the nobility. Yet even here the native stock declined. The decay of agriculture, brought about by the establishment of latifundia and intensified by confiscations and veteran settlements, drove numbers of farmers into the towns, where, unwilling to engage in trade, they sank into unemployment and poverty, and where, in their endeavours to maintain a high standard of living, they were not able to support the cost of rearing children. At the same time many were tempted to emigrate to the colonies across the sea which Julius Caesar and Augustus founded. Many went away to Romanize the provinces, while society was becoming Orientalized at home. Of course freedmen must have shared in those colonies also; we know they participated very freely in the restoration of Corinth; and they probably did so in many other colomes of the Dictator; but, often past the prime of life at manumission, frequently held by obligations towards their patrons, and more often than not comfortably settled in employment, for the most part they could not or would not leave the land of their slavery. Thus it was the free-born Italian, anxious for land to till and live upon, who displayed the keenest colonizing activity.
Among all the causes of the change of race (apart from manumission) war was the most Important. The armies of the late Republic and civil wars had consisted largely of Italians, who, if they were not killed off, were at least deprived of domestic life during their prime. Meanwhile the freedmen, usually excluded from the army, and the freedman’s descendant, never a keen soldier, were allowed an uninterrupted family life and produced off-spring with greater freedom. Moreover, after his twenty years’ service, it was frequently the case that the legionary never returned home, but joined with his fellow-veterans to found a colony in the province where he had served.
The Roman thus gave way to the Easterner in Italy, while he made a place for himself in the provinces.” [200-2]
• More citations of historians of a similar nature can be read here:
From Slave to Emperor – Famous Historians on the Racial Change Leading to the Fall of the Classical Roman Civilization.
• www.solargeneral.org/wp-content/uploads/library/from-slave-to-emperor-the-racial-shift-in-roman-society.pdf
The Race Change in Western Europe.
• www.askelm.com/people/peo011.htm
• Roman writers on the problem of miscegenation:
Classical Roman Writers of Race-Mixing in Rome.
• solargeneral.org/wp-content/uploads/library/classical-roman-writers-on-race-mixing-in-rome.pdf
• The aliens who mixed with the classical Greeks and Romans were largely “Caucasian” or “Caucasoid”, if one uses the broad definition of these terms that often includes Turks, North Africans, Near Easterners, southwest Asians, etc. Many of them died in the wake of the Roman Empire’s fall, when Italy’s urban population collapsed.
4. • See the [Mokyr 90:20-1] citation, above.
• “In all likelihood, the Greek and Roman technological “failure” has been exaggerated. All too often we tend to identify technology with mechanics, because our civilization is essentially mechanical. Political and administrative organization, military organization, architecture and road construction, even artistic products such as frescoes, bear the marks of technology, and in none of these fields could the Greeks and Romans be considered failures.” [Cipolla 80:168]
5. • “As regards agriculture, interest centers upon those outer provinces into which the empire had begun to expand in the time of Julius Caesar. The Mediterranean lands had their own long-standing problems of seasonal rainfall and lightness of soil; they were often under-manured, the sheep being sent to graze the hills; and there was a general scarcity of land for stock-raising. It has even been suggested that exhaustion of the soil was one cause of the empire’s eventual downfall, though the prices of corn in the Republic and Late Empire periods when compared showed little change. In any case, the Roman economy had much to gain by bringing a wider area into cultivation, and the stimulus given to tillage outside the Mediterranean lands is one of the important developments of this period. But the regions affected, such as northern Gaul and Britain, were mainly places of damper climate and predominantly heavier soil, for which the agricultural techniques practised by the Romans had little to offer, except as regards viticulture, where they were the heirs of the Greeks.” [Derry 60:23]
• “In classical antiquity, the grain supply to the city of Rome could not be met entirely from the surrounding countryside, which was taken up by the villas and parks of the aristocracy and which produced mainly fruit, vegetables and other perishable goods. The city therefore became increasingly reliant on grain supplies from other parts of Italy, notably Campania, and from elsewhere in the empire, particularly the provinces of Sicily, North Africa and Egypt. These regions were capable of shipping adequate grain for the population of the capital amounting to 60 million modii (540 million litres / 540,000 cubic metres or 135 million gallons / 16.8 million bushels) annually, according to some sources. These provinces and the shipping lanes that connected them with Ostia and other important ports thus gained great strategic importance. Whoever controlled the grain supply had an important measure of control over the city of Rome…
During the Principate, the surrounding Italian countryside only provided ten percent of the total grain imports into Rome. The majority of her grain came from North Africa and Egypt. Several assessments have been made toward the total amount of grain that Rome imported from these two regions. Peter Garnsey combines the accounts of the author of the fourth-century Epitome that 20 million modii of wheat came from Egypt and Josephus’ statement in the mid-first century AD that North Africa provided twice the export of Egypt and that it supplied Rome eight months of the year and Egypt supplied the other four, leaving a total of 60 million modii imported to Rome. Garnsey finds this number too high as this works out to 400,000 tons but only 200,000 tonnes was required for Augustus’ first grain dole. G.E. Rickman estimated that the total requirements of wheat for a population of Rome, given an average diet of 3,000 calories would require 40 million modii and using Josephus as his reference calculated 13 million modii imported from Egypt and 27 million modii imported from North Africa. An estimate in between these two numbers would probably be most accurate, as an excessive supply of imported grain would be desirable in case grain was lost at sea or spoiled in a warehouse. Grain would have also come from Sicily and Sardinia though these regions were not as important as they had been in the Republic after the annexation of Egypt by Augustus. A passage from Pliny also gives locations of grain exportation to Rome from Gaul, the Chersonese, Cyprus and Spain. These are not the only provinces to ship grain but were probably depended on the most.”
Cura Annonae
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cura_Annonae
• “According to Roman philosopher and politician Cicero, writing in the 1st century BC, Sardinia, Sicily and Africa were the main sources of wheat-growing, but this gradually changed. In the Bellum Judaicum, Roman-Jewish scholar Josephus, writing about the time of the destruction of Pompeii, maintained that Africa fed Rome for two-thirds of the year and Egypt for the remaining third. This pattern was to continue with the addition of supplies from the Balkans…
The arrival of the grain fleet was an event of great importance. Some time around the middle of the 1st century AD, Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca described the delight and relief of great crowds on the dock at Puteoli when the grain fleet finally arrived from Alexandria.”
How important was wheat in feeding the Roman Empire? By Caroline Stone.
• www.schools1.cic.ames.cam.ac.uk/pdfs/Food%20at%20Pompeii%20-%20Wheat.pdf
• “[I]t was in the emperor’s best interest to see to the continued supply of grain to the Empire’s capital. One has only to remember the connotations imparted by the Roman satirist Juvenal’s famous phrase panem et circenses, ‘bread and circuses’. Thus provision of the annona, which largely emanated from the grain-rich provinces of Egypt and Africa (which encompasses parts of modern-day Algeria, Libya and Tunisia), was directly related to the successful continuation of the incumbent emperor’s tenure of the purple…
Matters became even more difficult for Rome’s rulers after the partitioning of the Empire into East and West (especially after AD 395). In the Late Empire, Rome had to rely more or less exclusively on the African grain, since provisions from Egypt were reserved for the eastern capital of Constantinople.”
The Roman Empire and the Grain Fleets: Contracting out Public Services in Antiquity
• apebhconference.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/charles_ryan1.pdf
————
G. After the founding population of the Roman Empire intermixed into oblivion, it could not be held together.
As its founding citizens were replaced by their former subjects and slaves, Classical Rome’s cultural vitality faded and it degenerated into something of an oriental despotism [2]. Money ran short and severe measures were implemented to collect it [3]; inflation and debasement were rife [4]; the middle class and small property owners were ruined by competition with slave labor [5]; the ranks on the dole soared [6]; political chaos and corruption became rampant as bureaucratic control deepened [7]; and the plebs who did not turn to escapist religions [8] had to be pacified with hedonistic ‘bread and circuses’ [9]. The new ‘Romans’ had no stomach to defend the empire, and so this increasingly depended on recruitment of Germans [10]. Germanic leaders such as Theodoric admired classical Roman culture and tried to save it [11], but with the mixed population, with Byzantine in control of the wealthier east, with Judeo-Christians bent on destroying Rome’s “pagan” works [12], with Hun invaders and more Germanic tribes from the northern wilds seeking a place at the table, and with Islam on the warpath from the south, the quest was impossible.
1. • See the sources in the previous section on the dispersion and erosion of the Roman Empire’s founding population.
2. • “Such was the situation when in 285 AD Diocletion took charge. He drove back the barbarians and reconstituted the empire, but it was anew type of Roman empire, one which was ruled by an Oriental despotism. No one could approach Diocletion without prostrating himself on the ground and kissing the hem of his garment. Furthermore, he appointed three other caesars and divided the empire prefectures. His own capital was not at Rome but at Nicomedia in Asia Minor…
But there was no escape from the relentless regimentation which pervaded all aspects of life. For regimentation was the end-result of the abdication of political freedom and of the pursuit of materialism. The welfare state had become a despotism. This new and dreary type of empire still possessed sufficient power to hold the frontiers against the barbarians for another century.
In 324 AD Constantine the Great won the purple under the sign of the Cross. Hence came an edict of toleration for Christianity. But the despotism was tightened rather than eased; and it is an interesting note on the morals of the age that within three years of his championship of orthodox Christianity at the Council of Nicaea, Constantine put a nephew to death, drowned his wife in a bath, and murdered a son. Constantine put his capital in Byzantium, which he renamed Constantinople. Thus Rome was now no longer the center of the empire.” [Rempel 98]
• “The [Roman] monarchy was divided [in 286], but it was absolute. Each law of each ruler was issued in the name of all four, and was valid for the realm. The edict of the rulers became law at once, without the sanction of the Senate at Rome. All governmental officials were appointed by the rulers, and a gigantic bureaucracy spread its coils around the state. To further fortify the system, Diocletian developed the cult of the Emperor’s genius into a personal worship of himself as the earthly embodiment of Jupiter, while Maximian modestly consented to be Hercules; wisdom and force had come down from heaven to restore order and peace on earth. Diocletian assumed a diadem—a broad white fillet set with pearls—and robes of silk and gold; his shoes were studded with precious gems; he kept himself aloof in his palace, and required visitors to pass the gantlet of ceremonious eunuchs and titled chamberlains, and to kneel and kiss the hem of his robe. He was a man of the world, and doubtless smiled in private at these myths and forms; but his throne lacked the legitimacy of time, and he hoped to buttress it, to check the turbulence of the populace and the revolts of the army, by enduing himself with divinity and awe. “He had himself called dominus” says Aurelius Victor, “but he behaved like a father.” This adoption of Oriental despotism by the son of a slave, this identification of god and king, meant the final failure of republican institutions in antiquity, the surrender of the fruits of Marathon; it was a reversion, like Alexander’s, to the forms and theories of Achaemenid and Egyptian courts, of Ptolemaic, Parthian, and Sassanid kings. From this Orientalized monarchy came the structure of Byzantine and European kingdoms till the French Revolution. All that was needed now was to ally the Oriental monarch in an Oriental capital with an Oriental faith. Byzantinism began with Diocletian.” [Durant 44:194]
3. • “It seems clear, then, that the causes of the collapse must, like hidden cancers, have been developing during Gibbon’s period of happiness and prosperity. Some of the symptoms, at least, can be recognized. To take one example, in the first century of the empire there had still been a vigorous literature. But in the second century AD from Hadrian onward, apart from Suetonius’ Biographies of the Emperors, the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, and the Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius, Latin literature is overcome by a sort of indolent apathy. The same apathy began to exhibit itself in municipal life. Financial burdens which were imposed on the local magistrates and senators. By the second century many cities had spent themselves into debt.
There was the cost of repairing and maintaining the temples, public baths, and the like. There were also heavy expenditures for civic sacrifices, religious processions, feasts and for the games necessary to amuse the proletariat. The wealthy citizens of the municipalities who were, in effect, the middle-class, began to grow weary of the load: especially since the constantly rising taxation rates were shearing them closer and closer…
All these expenditures had to be recovered from the taxpayer. To compound the difficulties, there was an adverse balance of trade. Roman currency, for example, poured into India and the East to pay for luxuries. Even in the time of Nero, Seneca estimated that it cost Rome five million dollars a year to import its luxuries from the East. In a word, though seemingly prosperous, in the second century AD the Roman empire was overspending to such an extent that it was moving to an economic crisis.” [Rempel 98]
• “Even as Rome was under attack from outside forces, it was also crumbling from within thanks to a severe financial crisis. Constant wars and overspending had significantly lightened imperial coffers, and oppressive taxation and inflation had widened the gap between rich and poor. In the hope of avoiding the taxman, many members of the wealthy classes had even fled to the countryside and set up independent fiefdoms.” [Andrews 14]
• “Part of that argument is, inevitably, that the standard of living [in classical Rome] was not always the same, but changed over time. Tentative reconstructions of Roman GDP such as we have are too tentative to reveal such change, but a host of direct archaeological indicators (shipwrecks, mining activity, building, meat consumption, stature, etc.) show quite dramatic growth from mostly the first century BC, until the late second century AD—and dramatic decline thereafter.
It is not surprising, therefore, that those papers in this volume that deal with poverty in the early Empire (first and second century AD) are mostly optimistic, whereas the bulk of the papers on later antiquity do indeed take widespread poverty for granted. As Peter Garnsey showed many years ago, social relations became increasingly grim from the second century AD, and the law turned oppressive. Among free Roman citizens, a new distinction emerged, between the honestiores—the honorable (and certainly rich) people—and the humbler people, whose status increasingly came to resemble that of slaves. From the early third century AD nearly all free inhabitants of the Empire had become citizens, but some now were more equal than others.” [Jongman 08]
; See [Jongman 06] for more detail on this material.
• “The Cato Institute (a modern free-market think tank) says that emperors deliberately overtaxed the senatorial (or ruling) class in order to render it powerless. To do this, the emperors needed a powerful set of enforcers — the imperial guard.
Once the wealthy and powerful were no longer either rich or powerful, the poor had to pay the bills of the state.
These bills included the payment of the imperial guard and the military troops at the empire’s borders.
Since the military and the imperial guard were absolutely essential, taxpayers had to be compelled to produce their pay. Workers had to be tied to their land.
To escape the burden of tax, some small landowners sold themselves into slavery, since slaves didn’t have to pay tax and freedom from taxes was more desirable than personal liberty.
Tom Cornell… argues that in the early days of the Roman Republic, debt-bondage ( nexum) was acceptable. What wasn’t acceptable was usury or outrageous treatment. Nexum, Cornell argues, was better than being sold into foreign slavery or death. It is possible that centuries later, during the Empire, the same sentiments prevailed.
Since the Empire wasn’t making money from the slaves, Emperor Valens… made it illegal to sell oneself into slavery.”
Economic Reasons for the Fall of Rome, by N.S. Gill.
• www.thoughtco.com/economic-reasons-for-fall-of-rome-118357
• “There were periodic exactions from the rich and frequent confiscations of property. The better-off inhabitants of the towns were forced to provide food, lodging, and transport for the troops. Soldiers were allowed to loot the districts through which they passed. Production was everywhere discouraged and in some places brought to a halt.
Ruinous taxation eventually destroyed the sources of revenue. It could no longer cover the state’s huge expenditures, and a raging inflation set in. There are no consumer-price indexes by which we can measure this, but we can get some rough notion from the price of wheat in Egypt. This was surprisingly steady, Rostovtzeff tells us, in the first and second centuries, especially in the second: it amounted to 7 or 8 drachmae for one artaba (about a bushel). In the difficult times at the end of the second century it was 17 or 18 drachmae, almost a famine price, and in the first half of the third it varied between 12 and 20 drachmae. The depreciation of money and the rise in prices continued, with the result that in the time of the Emperor Diocletian one artaba cost 120,000 drachmae. This means that the price was about 15,000 times as high as in the second century.
In 301 Diocletian compounded the evil by his price-fixing edict, which punished evasion with death. Out of fear, nothing was offered for sale and the scarcity grew much worse. After a dozen years and many executions, the law was repealed.”
Poor Relief in Ancient Rome (1971), by Henry Hazlitt.
• fee.org/articles/poor-relief-in-ancient-rome/
• “As for buying bigger and better equipped armies through increased taxation, already common people were over-taxed, and taxes were often taken by force, and at times with torture. Continual demands of the army and the empire’s enormous bureaucracy were exhausting the empire’s economy and adding to the alienation of those who peopled the empire. Meanwhile, tax evasions by the rich remained common, and the bigger landowners continued to pass their share of taxes onto their tenants.”
The Roman Empire Disintegrates.
• www.fsmitha.com/h1/ch24.htm
4. • “Nero and other emperors debased the currency in order to supply a demand for more coins. By debasing the currency is meant that instead of a coin having its own intrinsic value+, it was now the only representative of the silver or gold it had once contained.
By the time of Claudius II Gothicus (268-270 A.D.), the amount of silver in a supposedly (100%) silver denarius was only .02%.
This led to or was severe inflation, depending on how you define inflation.”
Economic Reasons for the Fall of Rome, by N.S. Gill.
• www.thoughtco.com/economic-reasons-for-fall-of-rome-118357
5. • “There was the cancer of slavery and the equally dangerous practice of keeping a segment of the population permanently on the dole. There was free labor subsisting on starvation wages because of the competition of slavery.” [Rempel 98]
• See the “Economic Reasons for the Fall of Rome” citation, above.
• “During the latter years of the empire farming was done on large estates called latifundia that were owned by wealthy men who used slave labor. A farmer who had to pay workmen could not produce goods as cheaply. Many farmers could not compete with these low prices and lost or sold their farms. This not only undermined the citizen farmer who passed his values to his family, but also filled the cities with unemployed people. At one time, the emperor was importing grain to feed more than 100,000 people in Rome alone. These people were not only a burden but also had little to do but cause trouble and contribute to an ever increasing crime rate.”
Fall of the Roman Empire
• www.rome.info/history/empire/fall/
6. • “To the cost of the bureaucracy was added the expense of the dole. Originally, this was passed out once a month. By the time of Marcus Aurelius, there was a daily distribution of pork, oil, and bread to the proletariat.” [Rempel 98]
• “An excellent account of the subsequent history of the grain dole can be found in H. J. Haskell’s book, The New Deal in Old Rome. I summarize this history here:
There was no means test. Anyone willing to stand in the bread line could take advantage of the low prices. Perhaps 50,000 applied at first, but the number kept increasing. The senate, although it had been responsible for the death of Gaius Gracchus, did not dare abolish the sale of cheap wheat. A conservative government under Sulla did withdraw the cheap wheat, but shortly afterward, in a period of great unrest, restored it, and 200,000 persons appeared as purchasers. Then a politician named Claudius ran for tribune on a free-wheat platform, and won.
A decade later, when Julius Caesar came to power, he found 320,000 persons on grain relief. He succeeded in having the relief rolls cut to 150,000 by applying a means test. After his death the rolls climbed once again to 320,000. Augustus once more introduced a means test and reduced the number to 200,000.
Thereafter during the Imperial prosperity the numbers on relief continued at about this figure. Nearly 300 years later, under the Emperor Aurelian, the dole was extended and made hereditary. Two pounds of bread were issued daily to all registered citizens who applied. In addition, pork, olive oil, and salt were distributed free at regular intervals. When Constantinople was founded, the right to relief was attached to new houses in order to encourage building.”
Poor Relief in Ancient Rome (1971), by Henry Hazlitt.
• fee.org/articles/poor-relief-in-ancient-rome/
• “By the third century AD, the food program had been amended multiple times. Discounted grain was replaced with entirely free grain, and at its peak, a third of Rome took advantage of the program. It became a hereditary privilege, passed down from parent to child. Other foodstuffs, including olive oil, pork, and salt, were regularly incorporated into the dole. The program ballooned until it was the second-largest expenditure in the imperial budget, behind the military. It failed to serve as a temporary safety net; like many government programs, it became perpetual assistance for a permanent constituency who felt entitled to its benefits.”
The Slow-Motion Financial Suicide of the Roman Empire (2015), by Lawrence W. Reed, Marc Hyden.
• fee.org/articles/the-slow-motion-financial-suicide-of-the-roman-empire/
7. • “If Rome’s sheer size made it difficult to govern, ineffective and inconsistent leadership only served to magnify the problem. Being the Roman emperor had always been a particularly dangerous job, but during the tumultuous second and third centuries it nearly became a death sentence. Civil war thrust the empire into chaos, and more than 20 men took the throne in the span of only 75 years, usually after the murder of their predecessor. The Praetorian Guard—the emperor’s personal bodyguards—assassinated and installed new sovereigns at will, and once even auctioned the spot off to the highest bidder. The political rot also extended to the Roman Senate, which failed to temper the excesses of the emperors due to its own widespread corruption and incompetence. As the situation worsened, civic pride waned and many Roman citizens lost trust in their leadership.” [Andrews 14]
• “There were other cases, beginning with Hadrian, where, when municipalities got into financial difficulties, imperial curators were put in charge and the cities lost their independence. The people did not seem to mind…
This extension of paternalism was accompanied by a tremendous increase in the personnel of the imperial civil service. Each bureau expanded its field and new bureaux were constantly being created. By the time of Antoninus Pius, who ruled from 138 to 161 AD, the Roman bureaucracy was as all-embracing as that of modern times. Naturally, too, as benevolent paternalism and bureaucracy took over, personal freedom tended to disappear. By the third century, to quote the historian Trever, “the relentless system of taxation, requisition, and compulsory labor was administered by an army of military bureaucrats. . . .Everywhere . . .were the ubiquitous personal agents of the emperors to spy out any remotest case of attempted strikes or evasion of taxes.”…
Government paternalism, bureaucracy, inflation, an ever-increasing taste for the brutal and brutalizing spectacles of the amphitheater and the circus were symptoms of spiritual malaise which had begun when political freedom was tossed away in the interests of peace, security, and materialism.” [Rempel 98]
• “By 301 AD, while Emperor Diocletian was restructuring the government, the military, and the economy, he issued the famous Edict of Maximum Prices. Rome had become a totalitarian state that blamed many of its economic woes on supposed greedy profiteers. The edict defined the maximum prices and wages for goods and services. Failure to obey was punishable by death. Again, to no one’s surprise, many vendors refused to sell their goods at the set prices, and within a few years, Romans were ignoring the edict.”
The Slow-Motion Financial Suicide of the Roman Empire (2015), by Lawrence W. Reed, Marc Hyden.
• “The author of On Matters of Warfare advocated an increase in defense spending by cutting the bonuses that the state paid to soldiers and civil servants and by increasing the taxes on those landowners in areas threatened by invasion. And the tract addressed the issue of hearts and minds. It claimed that official corruption and the rich oppressing the poor were causing disorder. It called for increasing patriotism through social reform.
The tract was ignored. The imperial bureaucracy remained corrupt. Government positions were hereditary, honest government officials were rare, and people continued to detest officials as they did soldiers. Christian emperors had not changed that.”
The Roman Empire Disintegrates.
• www.fsmitha.com/h1/ch24.htm
8. • “There was free labor subsisting on starvation wages because of the competition of slavery. At the other end of the scale lolled a group of multi-millionaires for whom no luxury was too extravagant. Nor did anyone perceive that inflation and rising taxation must ultimately squeeze the middle class out of being. Meanwhile, a tide of Oriental religions tried to fill the spiritual vacuum.” [Rempel 98]
• “It would be illuminating by way of illustration of this [racial] change to study the spread of the mystery religions… Dobschuitz, a more orthodox churchman, seems to see in the spread of these cults the pervasion of a new and deeper religious spirit, which, in some mystical way, was preparing the old world for Christianity. But is not the success of the cults in great measure an expression of the religious feelings of the new people themselves? And if it is, may it not be that Occidentals who are actually of Oriental extraction, men of more emotional nature, are simply finding in these cults the satisfaction that, after long deprivation, their temperaments naturally required? When a senator, dignified by the name of M. Aurelius Victor, is found among the votaries of Mithras in the later empire, it may well be that he is the great-grandson of some child kidnapped in Parthia and sold on the block at Rome… In the western provinces, the Syrian and Egyptian gods were worshipped chiefly by people who seem not to be native to the soil. The Mithraic worshippers in these provinces were, for the most part, soldiers recruited or formerly stationed in the East, and Orientals who, by way of commerce or the slave-market, had come to live in the West. From the centres where such people lived the cult spread but very slowly…
[T]he Po valley, that is Cisalpine Gaul, which preserved its Occidental aspect better than any other part of Italy, might yield usable data. For this region nearly one hundred devotees of Oriental gods are recorded in the fifth volume of CIL., and, as soldiers and Roman officers are not numerous there, the worshippers may be assumed to represent a normal average for the community. Among them I find only twelve who are actually recorded as slaves or freedmen, but upon examination of the names, more than four-fifths seem, after all, to belong to foreign stock… This seems to me to be a fairly typical situation, and not without significance. In short, the mystery cults permeated the city, Italy, and the western provinces only to such an extent as the city and Italy and the provinces were permeated by the stock that had created those religions.
At Rome, Magna Mater was introduced for political reasons during the Punic War, when the city was still Italian. The rites proved to be shocking to the unemotional westerner, who worshipped the staid patrician called Jupiter Optimus Maximus, and were locked in behind a wall. As the urban populace began to change, however, new rites clamored for admittance, for, as a senator in Nero’s days says, “Nationes in familiis habemus, quibus diversi ritus, externa sacra.” And as the populace enforced their demands upon the emperor for panem et circensus, so they also secured recognition for their externa sacra. One after another of the emperors gained popularity with the rabble by erecting a shrine to some foreign Baal, or a statue to Isis in his chapel… Finally, in the third and fourth centuries, when even the aristocracy at Rome was almost completely foreign, these Eastern cults, rather than those of old Rome, became the centres of “patrician” opposition to Christianity. In other words, the western invasion of the mystery cults is hardly a miraculous conversion of the even-tempered, practical-minded Indo-European to an orgiastic emotionalism, foreign to his nature. These religions came with their peoples, and in so far as they gained new converts, they attracted for the most part people of Oriental extraction who had temporarily fallen away from native ways in the western world. Christianity, which contained enough Oriental mysticism to appeal to the vast herd of Easterners in the West, and enough Hellenic sanity to captivate the rationalistic Westerner, found, even if one reckons only with social forces, the most congenial soil for growth in the conglomeration of Europeans, Asiatics, and Africans that filled the western Roman Empire in the second century.” [Frank 16]
• “The Christians were not less adverse to the business than to the pleasures of this world… Their simplicity was offended by the use of oaths, by the pomp of magistracy, and by the active contention of public life; nor could their humane ignorance be convinced that it was lawful on any occasion to shed the blood of our fellow-creatures, either by the sword of justice or by that of war, even though their criminal or hostile attempts should threaten the peace and safety of the whole community… The Christians felt and confessed that such institutions might be necessary for the present system of the world, and they cheerfully submitted to the authority of their Pagan governors. But while they inculcated the maxims of passive obedience, they refused to take any active part in the civil administration or the military defence of the empire… [I]t was impossible that the Christians, without renouncing a more sacred duty, could assume the character of soldiers, of magistrates, or of princes. This indolent, or even criminal disregard to the public welfare, exposed them to the contempt and reproaches of the Pagans, who very frequently asked, what must be the fate of the empire, attacked on every side by the barbarians, if all mankind should adopt the pusillanimous sentiments of the new sect? To this insulting question the Christian apologists returned obscure and ambiguous answers, as they were unwilling to reveal the secret cause of their security; the expectation that, before the conversion of mankind was accomplished, war, government, the Roman empire, and the world itself, would be no more. It may be observed that, in this instance likewise, the situation of the first Christians coincided very happily with their religious scruples, and that their aversion to an active life contributed rather to excuse them from the service than to exclude them from the honours of the state and army…
It is incumbent on us diligently to remember that the kingdom of heaven was promised to the poor in spirit, and that minds afflicted by calamity and the contempt of mankind cheerfully listen to the divine promise of future happiness; while, on the contrary, the fortunate are satisfied with the possession of this world; and the wise abuse in doubt and dispute their vain superiority of reason and knowledge.” [Gibbon 76:chapter 15]
9. • “Meanwhile, the expenditure on the public spectacles kept mounting. A hundred million dollars a year is a moderate estimate of what was poured out on the games.” [Rempel 98]
• “All these elaborate preparations for spectacle came at a price. A political career in the late Republic required huge amounts of cash; elites, whose wealth tended not to be in liquid form, went heavily into debt to finance candidacy. The office of aedile demanded considerable financial resources, just for the ordinary games; the additional presentation of munera and the increasingly glitzy nature of Roman spectacle made this a heavy burden indeed. By the end of the Republic, the level of expenditure on games by politicians was exorbitant, even ruinous.” [Futrell 09:14]
• “Gladiators could be compared to our modern game of foot-ball. The unemployment of thousands of Romans created boredom, which led to civil unrest and rioting in the streets… As this mob-type mentality grew, the government realized that these unemployed people needed to be entertained, which led to the creation of the spectacular gladiatorial games. The Emperors, and therefore the state, and corrupt politicians bore the high costs of the gladiatorial games to show good-will and encouragement to the mob. Eventually, the popularity of the games grew so big that the costs of producing them came to one-third of the total income of the Roman Empire.” [Shaffer 10:78]
10. • “During the same period, the barbarians had emerged from obscurity and contempt, and the warriors of Germany and Scythia were introduced into the provinces, as the servants, the allies, and at length the masters, of the Romans, whom they insulted or protected. The hatred of the people was suppressed by fear; they respected the spirit and splendour of the martial chiefs who were invested with the honours of the empire; and the fate of Rome had long depended on the sword of those formidable strangers.” [Gibbon 76:chapter 36]
• “Very few slaves are recorded from the Alpine and Danube provinces, while Germans rarely appear, except among the imperial bodyguard. Bang remarks that Europeans were of greater service to the empire as soldiers than servants.” [Frank 16]
• “Perhaps as a consequence of this conviction, Rome often deviated from its standard recruiting policies. For example, no close reader of Caesar could fail to observe that the legendary general was repeatedly saved, even at Alesia, by mounted German mercenaries whom he had hired for his war against Vercingetorix. Subsequently, Augustus established an imperial bodyguard, the custodes, composed entirely of Germans. Army recruitment took a similar path. Whereas Italy still supplied 65 percent of legionary troops during the reigns of Augustus, Tiberius, and Caligula, by the mid-second century the contribution of the Italian heartland had dwindled to less than 1 percent. Rome had begun recruiting its soldiers from the least civilized areas of the empire—a policy that would remain in place in late Roman times. Recruiters seem to have believed that the best soldiers, the real fighting men, could only be found outside the cities…
To fill its ranks, the late Roman army resorted to unprecedented measures. Sons of soldiers were required to take up the vocation of their fathers. Foreigners served in record numbers. Some were drawn from defeated barbarian groups that had been settled as subject peoples on Roman lands. Not entirely free, these laeti had no choice but to supply soldiers to the Roman army, where they traditionally served under Roman commanders. Increasingly, however, the army filled its ranks by attracting volunteers from outside the empire. In the fourth century, huge numbers of Germans enlisted, and many of them attained high rank. The army itself—once the most powerful Romanizing force in the world—was rapidly becoming Germanized by its own recruits. German terminology and even German customs—such as the barritus, the old German battle cry—became widespread. Contemporary writers used the terms barbarus (barbarian) and miles (soldier) interchangeably.”
Rome’s Barbarian Mercenaries (2007), by David Frye.
• www.historynet.com/romes-barbarian-mercenaries.htm
• “Young [Roman empire] men added to the shortage by trying to avoid military service, which offered them very low pay and hardship. Facing these shortages, the government had been recruiting Germans, who, with their warrior traditions, were more willing to serve in the military than most youthful Romans, especially city dwellers.”
The Roman Empire Disintegrates.
• www.fsmitha.com/h1/ch24.htm
11. • “As the patron of the republic, it was the interest and duty of the Gothic king to cultivate the affections of the senate and people. The nobles of Rome were flattered by sonorous epithets and formal professions of respect, which had been more justly applied to the merit and authority of their ancestors. The people enjoyed, without fear or danger, the three blessings of a capital, order, plenty, and public amusements… In the seventh year of his peaceful reign, Theodoric visited the old capital of the world; the senate and people advanced in solemn procession to salute a second Trajan, a new Valentinian; and he nobly supported that character by the assurance of a just and legal government, in a discourse which he was not afraid to pronounce in public, and to inscribe on a tablet of brass. Rome, in this august ceremony, shot a last ray of declining glory; and a saint, the spectator of this pompous scene, could only hope, in his pious fancy, that it was excelled by the celestial splendor of the new Jerusalem. During a residence of six months, the fame, the person, and the courteous demeanor of the Gothic king, excited the admiration of the Romans, and he contemplated, with equal curiosity and surprise, the monuments that remained of their ancient greatness… The Gothic kings, so injuriously accused of the ruin of antiquity, were anxious to preserve the monuments of the nation whom they had subdued. The royal edicts were framed to prevent the abuses, the neglect, or the depredations of the citizens themselves; and a professed architect, the annual sum of two hundred pounds of gold, twenty-five thousand tiles, and the receipt of customs from the Lucrine port, were assigned for the ordinary repairs of the walls and public edifices. A similar care was extended to the statues of metal or marble of men or animals…
[T]he professors of grammar, rhetoric, and jurisprudence, were maintained in their privileges and pensions by the liberality of the Goths.” [Gibbon 81a:chapter 39]
; Gibbon wrote of the Germanic Roman Emperor Majorian:
“The successor of Avitus (A.D. 457) presents the welcome discovery of a great and heroic character, such as sometimes arise, in a degenerate age, to vindicate the honour of the human species. The emperor Majorian has deserved the praises of his contemporaries and of posterity; and these praises may be strongly expressed in the words of a judicious and disinterested historian: ‘That he was gentle to his subjects; that he was terrible to his enemies; and that he excelled in every virtue, all his predecessors who had reigned over the Romans.'” [Gibbon 81b:432]
• “Very noteworthy too is the difference which reveals itself here in a hundred ways, between the innate decency, taste and intuition of rough but pure, noble races and the mental barbarism of civilised mestizos. Theodosius, his tools (the Christian fanatics) and his successors had done their best to destroy the monuments of art; on the other hand, the first care of Theodoric, the Eastern Goth, was to take strong measures for the protection and restoration of the Roman monuments. This man could not write, to sign his name he had to use a metal stencil, but the Beautiful, which the bastard souls in their “Culture,“ in their hunting after offices and distinctions, in their greed of gold had passed by unheeded, the Beautiful, which to the nobler souls among the Chaos of Peoples was a hateful work of the devil, the Goth at once knew how to appreciate; the sculptures of Rome excited his admiration to such a degree that he appointed a special official to protect them.” [Chamberlain 11:323]
• “The Visigoths were awed by Roman civilization. They adopted local methods of agriculture. Already Christian, they began to learn Latin, and they administered their territory as the Romans had, using local Roman bureaucrats. The cultural diffusion worked both ways: those who had been there before the Visigoths (the Gallo-Romans) began adopting Germanic ways, and some of them began wearing Visigoth trousers instead of the Roman toga.”
Vandals and Huns – the Empire from 410 to 450 CE.
• www.fsmitha.com/h1/ch26.htm
12. • The fury of Judeo-Christians in destroying “the most splendid and beautiful monuments of Grecian architecture” etc. of the Roman Empire is reviewed by Gibbon in the The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. For example: “[I]n almost every province of the Roman world, an army of [Christian] fanatics, without authority and without discipline, invaded the peaceful inhabitants; and the ruin of the fairest structures of antiquity still displays the ravages of those barbarians who alone had time and inclination to execute such laborious destruction.” [Gibbon 76: chapter 28]
; “The Gothic arms were less fatal to the schools of Athens than the establishment of a new religion, whose ministers superseded the exercise of reason, resolved every question by an article of faith, and condemned the infidel or sceptic to eternal flames. In many a volume of laborious controversy, they exposed the weakness of the understanding and the corruption of the heart, insulted human nature in the sages of antiquity, and proscribed the spirit of philosophical inquiry, so repugnant to the doctrine, or at least to the temper, of an humble believer.” [Gibbon 81a]
; More on Christian destructions in this article, under “The “Dark Ages””:
• aryannordicalpinealiens.blogspot.com/2008/10/were-ancient-romans-nordic.html
• See the [Chamberlain 11:323] citation, above.
• “[Emperor] Theodosius did his penance, and in gratitude for his reconciliation with Ambrose he acted on Ambrose’s views as to what should be done about paganism. Theodosius banned the Olympic games – which were considered pagan. He prohibited visits to pagan temples and forbade all pagan worship. Ordinary Christians were delighted at this move, and mobs of Christians joined the anti-pagan program by robbing pagan temples of their treasures and looting temple libraries, causing the disappearance of many writings. In the repression, some of the most splendid buildings of Grecian architecture were destroyed.
Pagans in the east tried to defend their freedom to worship, and in the west some pagans rallied in an attempt to overthrow Gratian, and in 383 Gratian was assassinated. A military commander in the west, being a German and not eligible to be emperor, created an anti-Christian puppet named Eugenius, who announced that the hour of deliverance from Christianity was at hand.
In response, Theodosius cracked down harder on pagans in the eastern half of the empire. He made pagan worship punishable by death. In 394, he led an army of Visigoth cavalry and others against Eugenius in the west, defeating Eugenius’ forces at the Frigidus River in the extreme northeast of Italy, a victory the Church was later to interpret as the work of God triumphing over paganism.
With his victory against Eugenius, Theodosius moved against paganism in the western half of the empire as he had in the east, wiping out freedom of worship across the whole of the empire.”
Theodosius, Persecutions and Disunity.
• www.fsmitha.com/h1/rome23.htm
————
H. Mainland Europe, barely changed by the Roman Empire, gradually developed its agricultural technology.
The Roman towns in mainland Europe, which were based on forced labor and exchange with the empire, gave only “a veneer of literate culture [that] covered a core of essentially Neolithic village life” [1]. Mainland Europe’s rural and pastoral mode of life “found the rule of Rome a passing intrusion” [2]. Though the end of the Roman Empire meant a contraction of trade and production, little technology was lost [3]. In the latter half of the first millennium, northern Europe adopted and/or developed some key agricultural technologies that enabled her eventually to urbanize [4]. These included the heavy mouldboard plow that broke up and turned over the thickly rooted soil [5]; increased and improved utilization of horse power, with the shoulder harness and padded collar and the horseshoe [6]; improved field organization and coordination with the open fields system [7]; and the three-field crop rotation system that improved soil fertility while reducing fallow time, and provided oats for horse feed and protein-rich legumes for people [8]. These technologies were gradually implemented and optimized in Europe’s environment over several centuries, replacing previous techniques and arrangements [9].
1. • “Europe north of the Alps had never been the scene of much higher learning prior to the twelfth century, and, hence, it is misleading to speak of Europe as having fallen into a “Dark Age.” Since Roman times a veneer of literate culture, manifested in monastery schools and the occasional scholar, covered a core of essentially Neolithic village life in northern Europe.” [McClellan 06:182]
2. • “‘It may not be extravagent’, Clark and Piggott conclude, ‘to see an origin for much of medieval Europe in the prehistoric societies which developed in the second millennium BC.’ They consider that this was the form that persisted into the early Middle Ages and found the rule of Rome a passing intrusion. Only when plough husbandry improved during the Dark Ages did the population grow enough to produce towns and civilization and lift society above its old frontier status. Not only the vaunted heritage of Greece and Rome but also the cellular, high-energy, high-consumption life-style and individualistic preferences of the Celtic and Germanic tribes were carried forward to become early medieval society. The once-nomadic peasantry remained bellicose. McNeil suggests that this was because they were thin enough on the ground to have to combine soldiering with their farming. The levees en masse of the Asian peasantry were not at all the same thing. On this archaeological perspective, therefore, Europeanness lies in the form of the original settlement history. What it amounted to was a decentralized, aggressive, part-pastoral offshoot and variant of western Asian agricultural society, moulded by the forest.” [Jones 87:13]
• “The post-Roman world was divided geographically not only between Byzantine East and barbarian West but even more meaningfully between rich South and poor North. The Mediterranean littoral, though the scene of a good deal of political and military turbulence, remained in the late fifth century populous and productive, dotted with cities, towns, and landed estates. To the north, also, little was changed—a sparse population dwelling in temporary farming settlements, few cities worth the name, much empty forest, heath, and swamp.” [Gies 94:41]
3. • “What actually fell in the “fall of Rome”? In the realm of technology, very little. Lynn White went so far as to assert that there was “no evidence of a break in the continuity of technological development following the decline of the Western Roman Empire.” In some regions, certain Roman craft skills were lost for a time. The potter’s wheel disappeared from Britain, but when it returned from continental Europe in the ninth century, it had been improved by the kick wheel, which allowed the potter to use both hands to manipulate the workpiece. Roman mining operations contracted under the late Empire, and their scale was not again reached until at least the central Middle Ages, but techniques were not lost, and by the eighth century new mining regions in central and eastern Europe were beginning to open up. Along with mining, metallurgy went into a late Roman decline but by the ninth century showed an upward trend.” [Gies 94:40]
; “The new motte-and-bailey castles dominating local regions visually dramatized the developing political order, known to future historians as feudalism. As Vikings and Saracens retreated, the local lords could turn their attention and their innovative military technology against each other, creating a sort of Europe-wide anarchy on horseback. “The strong built castles, the weak became their bondsmen” (James Bryce).
But under the untidy surface, more meaningful change had taken place. By the beginning of the tenth century, notwithstanding the fall of Rome, Vikings, Saracens, and the loss of Greek science, the new Europe had in its technology clearly surpassed the ancient Mediterranean world. In agriculture, metallurgy, and sources of power it had introduced significant improvements, inherited, borrowed from Asia, or invented independently. Its continuing demographic surge was beginning to be reflected qualitatively, in the growth of cities… For everyone the standard of living was rising—in Robert Reynolds’s words, “not from high to higher, but from very low to less low.”
The revolution in agriculture that introduced new implements, new techniques, and a new organization of work was largely a revolution from below, not above. “The hero of the late Roman Empire and the early Middle Ages,” wrote Lynn White, “is the peasant, although this cannot be discovered from Gibbon.”
Less conspicuous than the castle but more significant for the long future was the above-ground reduction furnace, feeding iron to local forges whose smiths shaped it into parts for plows, spades, pitchforks, and shoes for horses beginning to pull with the aid of the new horse collar. As the horse trod Europe’s fields to cultivate the crops, the waterwheel turned “at wondrous speed” to grind the grain, while the triangular lateen sail drove ships on the Mediterranean—three more symbols of progress in a not so Dark Age.” [80-1]
• “Agricultural productivity was also increased by the introduction of new technologies and methods. These included the heavy plow, three-field crop rotation, and the harnessing of horse power through the horse collar and iron shoe. As early as the ninth century, Europeans surpassed Romans in the technologies of agriculture, metallurgy, and applied power.” [Deming 10:115]
4. • “A more durable solution to the problem of the change of the gravitational centre of Europe from south to north is to be found in the agricultural revolution of the early Middle Ages. By the early ninth century all the major interlocking elements of this revolution had been developed: the heavy plough, the open fields, the modern harness, the triennial rotation— everything except the nailed horseshoe, which appears a hundred years later. To be sure, the transition to the three-field system made such an assault on existing peasant properties that its diffusion beyond the Frankish heartland was slow; but Charlemagne’s renaming of the months indicates how large the new agricutural cycle loomed in his thinking. We may assume safely that its increased productivity was a major stimulus to the north even in his day.
The agricultural revolution of the early Middle Ages was limited to the northern plains where the heavy plow was appropriate to the rich soils, where the summer rains permitted a large spring planting, and where the oats of the summer crop supported the horses to pull the heavy plough. It was on those plains that the distinctive features both of the late medieval and of the modern worlds developed. The increased returns from the labor of the northern peasant raised his standard of living and consequently his ability to buy manufactured goods. It provided surplus food which, from the tenth century on, permitted rapid urbanization. In the new cities there arose a class of skilled artisans and merchants, the burghers who speedily got control of their communities and created a novel and characteristic way of life, democratic capitalism. And in this new environment germinated the dominant feature of the modern world: power technology.” [White 62:78]
5. • “Thus the wheeled plow, with deep-cutting iron share, had come in with the German invaders; but it had seen limited use in a world of limited animal power and low population density. Now it spread across Europe north of the Loire, opened up the rich river valleys, turned land reclaimed from forest and sea into fertile fields, in short did wonders wherever the heavy, clayey soil resisted the older Roman wooden scratch plow, which had worked well enough on the gravelly soils of the Mediterranean basin.
The wheeled plow turning heavy soil called for animals to match. We have already had occasion to speak of these big, stall-fed oxen such as were found nowhere else, and these large dray horses, more powerful if not stronger than the ox. These living, mobile engines offered a great advantage in a land-rich, labor-scarce economy.” [Landes 98:41]
• “The essential elements of the agricultural evolution were the introduction of the heavy plow and the creation of the three-field system… The ancient plow used in the Mediterranean economies scratched the soil with a wooden- or iron cutting point, or “stock,” which cut and pulverized the soil, preventing the evaporation of moisture and bringing subsoil minerals to the surface by capillary action. This aratrum was ill-suited to the heavy and moist clay soils of the plains north of the Alps. In its ultimate form, the heavy plow moved on wheels, and had a coulter that cut the soil vertically, a flat plowshare that cut it horizontally, and a mouldboard that turned the cut sods aside to create a deep furrow. The heavy plow made possible the cultivation of huge tracts of fertile land that in Roman times were either uncultivated or exploited by a primitive slash-and-burn technique. Although some Roman plows had wheels, the complete heavy plow did not make its appearance before the sixth century.” [Mokyr 90:32]
• “But beginning in the sixth century, a radical improvement in farming’s most basic tool was introduced. Pliny had described secondhand a heavy plow, mounted on wheels and drawn by several oxen, reported in use in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire. Its diffusion must have been limited; in effect, it waited in the wings for five centuries before appearing in numbers sufficient to attract notice, first in the Slavic lands, then in the Po valley, and in the early eighth century in the Rhineland. Sometimes it was mounted on wheels, sometimes not; the main function of the wheels was to allow adjustment of the plowshare to the depth of furrow.
An improved harness for harnessing in tandem (one animal behind the other) facilitated the use of multiple-ox teams to pull the heavy plow in attacking new ground. The combination of plow and team supplied the technological key to the prodigious task of clearing the forestland of fertile northwest Europe. Other new or little-used implements came into wide service: the harrow, which by crumbling the clods after plowing saved laborious cross-plowing; the scythe, rarely employed by the Romans, now needed to cut hay to feed the numerous oxen; and the pitchfork, to handle the hay. When Charlemagne proposed a new nomenclature for the calendar, he renamed July “Haying Month.”” [Gies 94:44-5]
• “The first innovation involved the introduction of the heavy plow. This behemoth of wood and iron, mounted on wheels and armed with an iron cutter, tore up the soil at the root line and turned it over, forming a furrow and eliminating the need for cross-plowing. The heavy plow was resisted by enormous friction and therefore had to be pulled by as many as eight oxen. By contrast, the Mediterranean scratch plow, adapted to light soils, was essentially a hoe dragged through the ground by one or two oxen, with fields plowed twice. The heavy plow, which the Romans had invented but rarely used, increased agricultural production by allowing the farmer to cultivate the wet lowlands of Europe.” [McClellan 06:178]
• “The Romans were aware of the existence of wheeled plows. In Natural History, Pliny the Elder described a type of wheeled plow that had been recently invented in Gaul. “There has been invented, at a comparatively recent period, in that part of Gaul known as Rhaetia, a plow with the addition of two small wheels.”
But it is likely that the heavy wheeled-plow adopted in Europe was not imported, but developed there to enable the exploitation of the heavy, clay-rich soils that were difficult to turn over with the common “scratch” plow used in the Mediterranean. The Slavs had heavy plows as early as the sixth century, and heavy plows were used in Germany during the seventh century.
The heavy wheeled-plow developed in northern Europe had three parts: the coulter, plowshare, and mouldboard. The coulter was a vertically-mounted knife blade. Set in front of the other components, the coulter cut a furrow in the soil. The plowshare was a horizontal blade. The plowshare followed the coulter, and sliced through the ground horizontally. After being cut both vertically and horizontally, the sod was ready to be overturned by the third component, the mouldboard. The blade of the plowshare was often mounted on the front of the mouldboard.
The heavy plow broke up the soil so efficiently that cross-plowing was not necessary. Thus time was saved, and more land could be plowed. Soil clods were broken up by harrows pulled by horses in a direction at right angles to plowed furrows. The harrow was a “wooden framework in which iron pegs or tines are set.” The Romans had harrows, but mainly used them for pulling weeds. Europeans used harrows “for leveling ridges left by the plough … covering in seeds after sowing, tearing up and gathering weeds, … [and] pulverizing the top soil and so conserving moisture.”” [Deming 10:170]
• “The third advantage of the heavy plough derived from the first two [no need for cross-ploughing, long and narrow fields had better drainage]: without such a plough it was difficult to exploit the dense, rich, alluvial bottom lands which, if properly handled, would give the peasant far greater crops than he could get from the light soils of the uplands. It was believed, for example, that the Anglo-Saxons had brought the heavy Germanic plough to Celtic Britain in the fifth century; thanks to it, the forests began to be cleared from the heavy soils, and the square, so-called ‘Celtic’ fields, which had long been cultivated on the uplands with the scratch-plough, were abandoned, and generally remain deserted today.” [White 62:43-4]
• “We find evidence strongly consistent with White’s hypothesis [that the adoption of the heavy plough in Northern Europe led to increased population density and urbanization]. With respect to the European sample, our estimations show that the heavy plough accounted for around 10% of the increase in population density and urbanization in the High Middle Age. The empirical evidence also largely confirms the historiographical evidence about the timing of the introduction and breakthrough of the heavy plough in medieval Europe…
As will be discussed in detail below, the existing evidence suggests that the heavy plough may have been introduced in some areas before AD 1000, but its breakthrough or widespread adoption—which is what should really concern us—seems only to have started in earnest around AD 1000…
[T]he development of the heavy plough is likely to have been gradual. This is one reason why it is difficult to pinpoint its exact origin and diffusion by relying on the existing evidence. Nonetheless, attempts to do so have been made. White (1962), for example, argues that Slavs may have introduced it, and that it therefore diffused from east to west starting in the late 6th century. Some of the evidence discussed below is in line with the view that the heavy plough was introduced in some parts of South Eastern Europe. Others have argued that it was invented by Germanic tribes and spread to Eastern Europe as part of the eastern expansion of the Germanic tribes (Barlett 1993; Piskorski 1999)…
The picture that emerges is thus one showing that the heavy plough had a significant effect on population density after AD 900, and that over time its impact became increasingly important. This is fully consistent with the view that the plough started to spread across Europe in earnest at the closing of the first millennium AD.” [Andersen 13]
6. • “In the centuries following the fall of Rome, three improvements vastly increased the efficiency of horses. The first was the nailed horseshoe. A hipposandal protecting the horse’s hooves had been used in antiquity, but from every point of view the horseshoe represented an improvement. The horseshoe was especially useful in the moist soils prevalent north of the Alps and for the heavier horses used in the later Middle Ages. Horseshoes protected the hooves from the soil moisture that wore out hooves quickly and caused them to splinter. The exact dating of the emergence of horseshoes is still a matter of controversy, as the archaeological evidence is ambiguous, but there can be no question that by the ninth century their use had become common and their economic effects had been felt throughout Europe. The horseshoe was applied to pack horses and mules as well, and led to the growing application of horses to commercial haulage… Finally, the third important innovation was the modern horse collar… [Lefebvre] discovered that the Greeks and the Romans used a throat-and-girth harness in which two straps were wound around the belly and neck of the horse. The neck strap simultaneously pressed on the animal’s jugular vein and cut off the windpipe as soon as it began to exert pressure. Lefebvre des Noettes found by experiments that a horse strapped this way lost about 80 percent of its efficiency. In early medieval times, by way of contrast, such an easily corrected waste of valuable energy was not tolerated. The solution to this problem emerged when the breast strap, which rested against the horse’s chest, and the collar harness, which rested against the shoulders, were invented. Both eliminated the yoke, and thus avoided the main shortcoming of the Roman harness. The breast strap appeared somewhat earlier than the collar, but both were more or less in place in the ninth century. Consequently, horses gradually acquired major economic importance in agriculture and in the hauling of wagons. The horse harness was supplemented by other advances in horse technology. In the early Middle Ages the tandem harnessing of horses (in a row rather than one beside the other) came into use. The whippletree, a wooden bar connecting the collar to the wagon or harrow, appeared in the eleventh century. Thus, errors in the most basic applications of animate power that the sophisticated civilizations of the Mediterranean had made for centuries were corrected in early medieval times. These innovations, according to a recent work opened the door to “the substantial, even massive, introduction of the horse to general draught work.”” [Mokyr 90:35-8]
• “The improved method of harnessing horses that began to be adopted in Europe during the ninth century was a padded collar. The origin of the padded horse collar is obscure, but it may have been introduced into Europe from China. The padded collar rests upon a horse’s shoulder, and enables them to exert full power without choking themselves.
The difference in traction force that can be obtained from the two harnessing methods is dramatic. It has been demonstrated by experiment that a team of horses equipped with collars can pull four to five times as much weight as horses harnessed across the throat.
Horses had advantages over oxen as plow animals. Both horses and oxen are approximately equal in their pulling power, but horses are capable of moving fifty percent faster. The horse can also work an hour or two longer per day compared to the ox…
A second factor that allowed horse power to be used in northern Europe was the nailed iron horse shoe. The Romans rode horses, but the nature of the relatively dry soils and terrain in the Mediterranean did not make it necessary to shoe their horses. Under wet conditions, the hoof of a horse softens and becomes easily worn or damaged. The iron horseshoe appears to have originated in Siberia in the ninth or tenth century. By the eleventh century, the horseshoe in Europe had become a common necessity.” [Deming 10:171]
• “An improved harness for harnessing in tandem (one animal behind the other) facilitated the use of multiple-ox teams to pull the heavy plow in attacking new ground. The combination of plow and team supplied the technological key to the prodigious task of clearing the forestland of fertile northwest Europe…
Toward the end of the period, an innovation as important for agriculture as the heavy plow made its appearance in Europe: the rigid, padded horse collar, long known in Asia, which converted the horse for the first time into an efficient draft animal. Developed back in Roman times, probably by the horse-dependent nomads of the central Asian steppes, the horse collar progressed westward in a course that has been traced by scholars through linguistic and iconographic clues. The first pictorial evidence of its appearance in Europe occurs in an illumination of the Trier Apocalypse (c. 800), which shows a pair of horses pulling an open carriage or wagon. The earliest text reference—to a horse-drawn plow—is from late-ninth-century Norway.” [Gies 94:45-6]
• See the [Jones 87:48-9] citation, below.
7. • “As we have seen this plough, with its coulter, share, and mould-board, offered much greater resistance to the soil than had the scratch-plough, and thus, at least in its earlier forms, it needed not one yoke but four—that is, as Pliny pointed out, eight oxen. Few peasants owned eight oxen. If they wished to use the new and more profitable plough, they would therefore pool their teams. But such a pooling would involve a revolution in the pattern of a peasant group. The old square shape of fields was inappropriate to the new plough: to use it effectively all the lands of a village had to be reorganized into vast, fenceless ‘open fields’ ploughed in long narrow strips. Moreover, the only practical way to distribute these strips was to assign them in sequence to the various peasants who owned the plough and the oxen constituting the co-operative team. Thus a peasant might ‘own’ and harvest fifty or sixty small strips scattered over the entire arable of the village.” [White 62:44]
; “In recent years German historical geographers have concluded that probably towards the end of the sixth century, and certainly in the seventh century, in central and south-western Germany and the Rhineland there began a remarkable increase of population, assarting and colonization which gradually spread to other regions, and that this expansion seems connected with the growth of open fields…
One of the chief functions of the open-field system was to increase the facilities for rearing cattle while at the same time putting maximum arable into grain… So long as there was a thin population in relation to available land, there was no great competition between the two regimes: the animals were in perpetual pasture. But with growing population, tillage spread at the expense of forest, swamp, and meadow. So long as each peasant was managing his own fields to suit himself, these could not be used for grazing, when fallow, without great expense for fencing, hedging, or herders. The open-fields system, by concentrating crops in either one or two big fields at any given moment, made the whole sweep of the fallow available for browsing and at the same time provided maximum protection for crops against cattle. In addition, it assured that the manure would not be wasted on wild pasture but would be deposited on next year’s arable.
As noted above, this balanced system of animal and cereal production, in conjunction with the heavy plough, was apparently developed into a normal and accepted system during the seventh century in the Frankish heartland. It helps to account for the relative prosperity and vigour of the Carolingian Age.” [54-6;159]
• “The heavy plow created the peculiarly long and narrow strips that characterized European open fields. But its impact was especially momentous because it required a team of oxen to pull it. Few peasants could afford to own such an expensive capital good, and in part in an attempt to solve the fixed cost problem, medieval society developed a semico-operative organization sometimes referred to as the manorial system.
The dependency of plowing on draft animals created the technical problem with which European agriculture grappled for many centuries: how to feed its animals. The solution found in the early Middle Ages combined three elements, though not all three were necessarily present simultaneously. First, under the new three-field system of crop rotation that spread slowly through Europe in the early Middle Ages, one third of the arable land was left fallow. The animals were let to graze on the fallow land, thus feeding themselves while at the same time fertilizing the soil with their droppings. Under the rotation system, each plot of land would rotate between fallow, winter crops, and spring crops. Second, the fields under crops were opened up to stubble grazing after the harvest, a custom known as “the right of common stock,” or vaine pature. Third, the village usually had a separate common field, not part of the rotation system, on which animals grazed. The right of common stock and the commons, together meant that farmers’ individual plots could not be separated by fences, and hence the system is sometimes known as open-field agriculture. The open-held system was not a technical invention strictu sensu as much as a brilliant organizational solution to a technical problem that combined private and public property rights in an ingenious fashion.” [Mokyr 90:32-3]
8. • “Along with these superior techniques went, as both cause and effect, a more intensive cultivation, in particular, a shift from a two-field (one half left fallow every year) to a three-field system of crop rotation (winter grain, spring grain, and one third fallow). This yielded a gain of one third in land productivity (one sixth of total cultivable land, but one third of the half previously under cultivation), which further contributed to the ability to support livestock, which increased the supply of fertilizer, which nourished yields, and so on in ascending cycle. Given the character of land distribution and the collective use of draft animals, this critical change called for strong communal leadership and cooperation, made easier by example and results.” [Landes 98:41]
• “Still another component of the Agricultural Revolution of the Middle Ages was the development of the three-field rotation system. The classic two-field farming system of the Mediterranean regions of antiquity typically involved farming one field while leaving another fallow. In the new three-field pattern that arose on the European plain, arable land was divided into three fields with plantings rotated over a three-year cycle: two seasonal plantings employed two of the fields, a winter wheat crop and a spring crop of oats, peas, beans, barley, and lentils, with the third field left fallow.” [McClellan 06:178]
• Lynn White in [White 62:69-76] reviews the development of the three-field crop rotation system, which increased production, provided oats for horse feed and protein-rich legumes for people. It began at around 800 in Germany, but its diffusion throughout Europe took several centuries, largely because of the increased land (and pooling of land) requirements: “It may be that the 300-year delay between the arrival of the modern harness and the widespread use of the horse for non-military purposes can be explained by the practical difficulties of switching a village from the biennial to the triennial rotation. We know of a few cases in which it took place, but unless an entirely new field could be assarted, or unless by sheer accident individual holdings were so arranged that what had been two could now be cut into three without drastic rea