"CONFUCIUS SAY...."
Old Values for New Tyrannies
by Jamyang Norbu
Most of us are not at our cerebral best first thing in the morning. Stimulants like coffee or tea do help but around this time of the year with MFN business in Washington (plus the hoo-hah of the Hongkong handover) an unusually high degree of alertness is required to guard oneself against the China Trade Lobby's subtle persuasions lurking within the contents of the morning paper. I must confess that I have, on an occasion or two, been somewhat swept away by the skilful prose of those who tell us that in order to help the people of China we must ignore the Chinese government's human rights violations -- concepts like human rights and democracy being anyway Western inventions which should not be insensitively foisted on an ancient Confucian culture of discipline, hierarchy and loyalty. But then I brew myself another mug of strong, mahogany brown tea, sit back and ask myself what the probability is of the journalists or columnists in question of having the Analects, or the Odes or any other Confucian classics
for that matter, by their bedside tables. Reason is restored.
Even President Clinton was moved to make a reference to Confucius around this time last year, when explaining why he felt it necessary to delink trade and human rights... "a proud Confucian culture that prizes order over liberty is specially reluctant to take step that is perceived as kowtowing to the US".
Actually the sage is on record as saying "Let humanity be your highest standard". Confucius may not exactly have been a democrat by present day standards but he believed in the rule of law and accountability in government. Though he believed in the necessity of hierarchy and ritual in government, he also absolutely believed that princes should rule through moral authority and not through violence and oppression. An even more humanist and democratic side of Confucianism is represented by Mencius who not only put the interests of the people above the ruler but even vindicated tyrannicide.
In his book The Burning Forest, the Chinese art historian and scholar Simon Leys tell us that "In traditional China, 'morality' (which means essentially Confucianism) was the main bulwark against incipient totalitarianism." He refers to the Chinese historian Yu Ying-shih, schematically summarizing an article by him on this question ("Anti-Intellectualism in Chinese Traditional Politics," Ming Pao Monthly, February and March 1976) as follows: "Confucianism described
the world in terms of a dualism; on the one hand there is the concrete, changing realm of actual politics, on the other hand there is the realm of abstract, permanent principles. The duty of the scholar-politician is to serve the ruler insofar as the ruler's behaviour and policies harmonize with the unchanging moral principles, which provide a stable reference by which to judge them. In case of a clash between the two realms, the Confucian scholar must, in the strong and unambiguous words of Xun Zi, 'follow the principles and disobey the Prince.'"
At the end of the last century, a neo-confucian scholar Kang Yu Wei (1858-1927), who was also China's first great modern reformer, came up with a radical interpretation of Confucius's teaching which shook the intellectual world of the Chinese gentry-literati. In Kang's view Confucius was a forward looking "sage king" who saw history as progressive unilinear development from an age of disorder where king and emperors ruled over people, through an age of approaching peace guided by constitutional monarchies, eventually to an age of universal peace and republican government.
Long before the seeds of Communism were first planted in China, there was a broad intellectual movement towards democracy. "Mr.Democracy and Mr.Science" represented, for the youth and intelligentsia of the turn of the century China, the two fundamental requisites for a modern Chinese state. The founding father of the modern Chinese state, Dr.Sun Yatsen, was a democrat. His widow, Song Meiling, together with Cai Yuanpei, chancellor of Beijing National University founded the Chinese League for the Protection of Human Rights as early as 1930.
It cannot be over-stressed that democracy and human rights do not just represent foreign values now being forced on a reluctant Chinese society. They existed in China's political debate since the end of the last century, appearing never to have existed only because of the effectiveness of totalitarian propaganda in blurring the political memory of a entire nation.
The notion of a set of "Asian Values" (as Confucian values are referred to in a larger context) of hierarchy, order, tradition that places little value on freedom and democracy can be dismissed outright if we take into account a large chunk of Asia which is oddly, but invariably, overlooked in this debate. I mean, of course, the world's largest, and arguably liveliest democracy -- India. If anyone from the West were to have the temerity to suggest to an Indian that he or she give up democracy and embrace "Asian Values", I definitely think that hard words would ensue.
Of course, there are other Asians, besides Indians who do not feel the necessity of limiting themselves to observing "Asian values". Malayasia's young deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, who is expected to succeed Mathathir Mohamad as soon as 1999, in a Newsweek interview (Sept 2, 1996) said: "Does Sun Yat-sen represent Asian values? Of course he does. He was a democrat and he believed in freedom of the press. And the media played a role in Sun's revolutionary era. The Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand -- they all had similar
experiences. The founding fathers always subscribed to moral fervour and traditional values -- very Asian at that -- but certainly they were great democrats."
He also has some choice word for "old values" describing them as "feudal" and "corrupt". At a meeting of South East Asian leaders in Singapore he offered this advise to those proponents of "Asian Values" facing criticism from the West. "If you don't want the West to be condescending, don't be condescending to your own people." The remark so annoyed Lee Kuan Yew, dictator of Singapore, that he began rustling a copy of the Asian Wall Street Journal as Anwar spoke.
Lee Kuan Yew, has been one of the leading advocate's of Asian and Confucian values. He has developed his own effective methods of silencing political opponents and outspoken journalists while avoiding the more conspicuous excesses of dictatorial rule which could possibly embarrass his supporters and friends in the West. Right wing dictators of the post World War II era have generally had a negative militarist image that have prevented them from spreading their political messages outside the areas of their own control. But Singapore's civilian exterior, clean cut orderly economy and anti-democratic politics make up a dangerous "model", not just for the likes of China and Burma, but even
possibly for shaky new democracies in Asia and Africa with economic problems and over-ambitious leaders. Henry Kissinger and James Schlesinger have honoured Lee Kuan Yew as Singapore's "architect of the next century". They and other members of the Nixon Center for Peace and Prosperity probably find the idea of a successful capitalist/fascist country with good golf courses and a muzzled press, secretly attractive. Others of more democratic bent are troubled. In a recent essay in the New York Times, William Safire warned that "The Singapore virus -- the notion that capitalist prosperity can be abetted by political repression -- could infect the global economy with its strain of fascism.
In Dharamsala, where democracy and the free-press have yet to feel fully welcome, a mutant strain of the Singapore virus has seriously infected our freedom struggle. For instance in the sixties and seventies Tibetans firmly believed that the whole purpose of having a Government-in-exile and keeping together a united exile community was to fight for freedom. The official version of our raison d'etre as refugees, oft repeated in the speeches of the Dalai Lama and his ministers, was that Tibetans had not left Tibet because of economic hardships but to continue the struggle for the independence of Tibet from a more favourable situation.
But last year the Dalai Lama stated in a couple of interviews that since Tibet was economically an underdeveloped country it would be advantageous for it to be part of China and its booming economy. He also added that as Tibet was a landlocked country it would need to be part of China which had access to the sea. It is not the place here to debate His Holiness's views on economics and geo-politics, but it can most certainly be said that his recent utterances have thoroughly confused and demoralised many of his followers.
So Tibetan offices like the International Campaign for Tibet no longer call for revocation of MFN for China. Instead its director, Lodi Gyari, announced some months ago in a New York Chinese newspaper that though he had formerly been a Tibetan nationalist, he had now seen the light and was no longer an advocate of Tibetan independence. Ngawang Khechok, the Tibetan new-age flautist, also seem to have been affected by this virus for before a recital at a public ceremony in New York to commemorate the Tienanmen massacre, he announced his belief that Tibetan's must give up their struggle for independence.
But some Western supporters of Tibet and a few die-hard Tibetan are still firmly rooting for freedom: organising trade boycotts, marches and monster rock concerts to promote the cause of an independent Tibet. Their untiring enthusiasm and idealism, in spite of the enormous contradictions between their position and that of the Dalai Lama's under whose leadership they are ostensibly operating, is not only cause for admiration, but for someone as cynical as myself, cause for a little bewilderment as well.
Still, one must toast their efforts, even if right at this moment it can only be done with a mug of strong tea.
1 July 1997
