The Formation of Chinese Ideology: Mao Zedong and the First Emperor.

the history of ancient China matters
today because people make it matter it's a remarkable fact that even a political leader as iconoclastic and obsessed with modernization as Mao Zedong under communism was the same time obsessed with the reinterpretation of the history of emperor Qin Shi Huang the Emperor whom we call in English the first emperor in the history of China is anyone in Germany today sincerely interested in reinterpreting the history of Emperor Charlemagne their ancient King in the same way does anyone in Germany feel that the understanding of that history has real significance for what Germany is today how it is governed today the legitimacy of the leader is the legitimacy the political system day and for what Germany ought to be in the future I think nobody I think nobody feels that way England in England does anyone in England look back on the career of King Arthur the same way that Mao Zedong and really that whole generation of the Communist Party obsessively looked back to the first time anyone in England care in the least about any of their ancient kings and feel that it has this powerful political significance now and for the future of England I would say in my humble opinion nobody feels that way maybe there are some aristocrats maybe there are some people in England I haven't met well maybe there are some people living at a higher socioeconomic status who grow up with a very different view of history but no in mainstream politics nobody knows the way definitely in left-wing politics no definitely in communist politics in England nobody nobody feels that way um it's really a bad start for educators high school teachers or university professors to try to dazzle the students with the ancient myths of ancient China what's impressive about ancient China is not how ancient it's the extent to which it still really matters today that it's still really meaningful and powerful in politics that it's still a part of state ideology in China today ancient China is not all that ancient not compared to Egypt ancient Egypt is more ancient and more impressive the pyramids the art of ancient Egypt even if you just go to Paris and see what the French stole from Egypt it's mind-blowing it's very very impressive ok however for political identity in Egypt today political ideology in Egypt today they have a huge cultural discontinuity caused by Islam there is no sense in which the history or political philosophy of the ancient rulers of Egypt matters from modern age today in the way that ancient China matters for modernity I can name two more countries that really have a more ancient history than China and the Chinese are very reluctant to admit this when you talked with us with a face to face you ever heard of India India is ancient - and we have written records going back to an unbelievably long way in this view of India you ever heard of a little country called Iraq Iraq probably holds the record for the most ancient civilization in terms of human beings living in urban populations living in cities and we have written records going back a long long way unbelievably ancient in Iraq however debates about ancient Iraq pre-modern pre Muslim Iraq do those matter in Iraq today the way that the formation of state ideology and China still matters of China day even within the Communist Party even for a unique historical figure like Mao Zedong that is what's remarkable so let's begin this video with a summary instead of ending with a summary you have the ancient feeble period of kingship that we mostly know about from a book that may hold the record as the most ancient book or the most ancient extent you know writing of any length in history of Chinese civilization which is memorably titled the book book the Xu Jing so foolish English this is often called something like the book of documents Xu jig so it's saying the same way that an English Bible is ultimately just a word that meant book Xu Jing is an unbelievably nonspecific title this is an ancient description of how the kingdom worked a lot of platitudes about what it is to be a good king what it is to be a good ruler how but it includes some platitudes and some descriptions of how trials worked how the justice system worked we do get some valuable historical evidence but it's an incredibly boring book nobody nobody is saying philosophically that the question of how China should be ruled today is based on this early more fabled period so moving for you of this this period of fables you then move forward into the warring States period and the warring States Period only has that name because later on people look back on it and call it the warring States Period if we're discussing the history of Western Europe the whole history is the warring States Period right look what are you gonna say the Napoleonic period was the warring States Period before and after it was also divided to warn States the warring States Period is only given this name when the Han Dynasty is looking back and contrasting it to the emergence new idea that China naturally under the Mandate of Heaven ought to be organized around the rule of a single Emperor a single man ought to unify the whole of China there's a considerable footnote here that the borders defining the whole of China exchange from here though warring States Period we move forward into the short-lived Qin Dynasty okay this is I'm not really pronouncing trail chin with a Jew chin the chin disty qim has one philosopher in the middle of it called Lord Xiang Lord Xiang is now in English described as a legalist all these categories are pretty meaningless and here we have a shocking contrast to the idealism of that earlier period of fabled monarchs fabled rule we now have a very brutal very Machiavellian very pragmatic philosophy of state that is written by real people talking about real situations you know this is like the contrast between you know King Arthur and reading Aristotle's down-to-earth analysis of how government actually works this isn't a fable this isn't a favor like King Arthur this is moving forward where suddenly we get a perspective on history in politics and which includes how to organize farming it how to organize the army of course but how to organize all of society we have a coherent philosophy from the middle of the the Qin Dynasty I should say really just the Qin Kingdom and then as history progresses Qin conquers more and more of its neighbors and it reaches the apex of megalomania under the first emperor Qin Shi Huang so Qi Chuang is remembered as the first emperor as you can already tell from what I've just said there were other Kings before him that were other people who could be described as Empress he actually creates a new term in Chinese meaning Emperor he is remembered as the first emperor and he is remembered for unifying China he didn't unify all of China under its current borders but nevertheless what you then have after the collapse of the Qin Dynasty after the end of the Qin Dynasty you have the Han Dynasty and the Han Dynasty looks back on this history and it's in that period that for the first time they have been written Chinese the warring States Period called such the period of warring States followed by the period of unification under the and you have the analysis of the chin as being effective but evil and then the resolution that as Chinese history moves forward under the Han Dynasty and the dynasties that followed that China was going to be effective but good so the critique of what was wrong with the chin the histy the writing of history to make Jin Chuang a villain rather than a hero when he unified China that's the formation of Chinese state ideology now that's not the whole story we could make a separate video about Chinese philosophy of Education the crucial role that education had in really cementing this into ancient China as we know it today when we look back we tend to remember this more ancient period as if they already had the system of exams written examinations that defined who was a bureaucrat who was a scholar who participated the system to cover nothing like that existed in this period but that that is a later development it's very important to the idea of legitimacy and that still exists in China today I did a recent video that was called China does not pretend to be a democracy and they still set this out they still talk about what's crucial to the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party the Chinese government today is they talk a lot about written exams that in order to be a powerful or influential person in order to participate in government in China today they talk about how many exams these people have to write that they have to study and write exams and that qualifies them to participate in government this is a contrast in United States of America I don't know if Donald Trump wrote a single exam in his life and of course anyone can be elected to be mayor senator what have you in most Western systems of government there is no examination that defines your legitimacy but apart from your legitimacy is a particular politician the whole system of government is legitimized by participating in this system of hierarchical education and that idea that the exams emanate from the Emperor and at the same time they then confer legitimacy on the government of the Emperor that is a leader that is later development in Chinese state ideology in this early period with the emergence of the Han Dynasty you have a much simpler linear development there was the earlier period of kind of fables the warring States Period the emergence of the Qin and again the philosophy of the Qin the political philosophy of the Qin we have neatly summed up in this one remarkable short document the book of Lord Shang and then we have the rejection of that the repudiation of that the critique of that by Han the Han Dynasty and then the conditions of the state the idea of what it is to have a good government that endures from the Han Dynasty forward for a very long time that really creates the foundation on which Buddhism flourishes on which Confucianism flourishes on which Taoism flourishes I think if we're being honest about the the formation of Chinese state ideology with the book of Lord Shang and then the critique of the book of our Chen the rise and fall of the first emperor Qin Chuang I think it's fair to say that Buddhism is of almost zero importance here and I think even Taoism and Confucianism narrowly defined and sometimes people use the word Confucianism just to mean all traditional Chinese culture but narrowly defining it I think that Confucianism is very important to the later period the Han Dynasty forward their ideas of legitimacy and good government and what it is to be a good man and a good civil servant and so on but I think it's very important to note that when we're talking about Jin Chuang Lord Shang even the Han Fei the Han Fei another early legalist even the original right end of the the daodejing of lava I think in that period we're not really talking about Confucianism as a major player in formation of Chinese state ideology yet okay this this comes later okay so what really matters about ancient China is that nobody will leave this alone is that a figure even a figure as iconoclastic and modernizing as Mao Zedong Mao Zedong had the slogan smash the old Society Mao Zedong went out and you know called for the Buddhist temples to be burned down and destroyed burned the old books he led a period of kind of unbelievable hostility towards tradition in ancient China but he personally from it we know this already as I think not even a high school student like a middle school student he read and studied the philosophy of Lord Shang Lord Zhang's idea of government and the state so we know this at least as a high school kid he knew about this and cared about this and right up to his death as an old man he's looking back at this history and he's participating in these debates and by the way when I say participate in these debates it wasn't merely academic people got persecuted people got tortured people got beaten up people got killed over these debates about reinterpreting Chinese history looking back and reinterpreting and he was especially interested in looking at that first emperor Qin Shihuang and saying wait was he really the villain of history or should we consider him the hero with an awareness that the later history that was written after his regime collapsed history was written by the victors with the subsequent victor shouldn't we look back and see that this is kind of propaganda and that maybe the archaeological evidence and maybe reinterpreting the textual evidence we had would instead show Jin Chuang to be the hero there is no doubt that Mao Zedong thought of himself as a figure in history like Jin Chuang there is a quotation from him that's now infamous I think because of the work of Frank Dakota our modern historian in English where Mao Zedong boasted that he had killed an enormous number of intellectuals that he had burned an enormous number books that academics remember Jin Chuang as a villain for only murdering so many thousand scholars only burning so many thousand books but that he Mao Zedong had killed so many more people and burned so many more books so therefore was he a greater man and was he a worse man the attempts of Mao Zedong to compare himself to that imperial past including there's this never-ending controversy during the Cultural Revolution of going back there's a particular opera made about bringing a complaint to the Emperor and the Emperor then you know punishing the guy who dares to complain there's you know even the reinterpretation of the water margin during that period and but going back and reinterpreting this core formation of state ideology in China looking at the significance of the first emperor the significance of that so-called legalist philosophy especially the one short book the book of Lord Shan there's much less interest in the Han Fei Tzu for whatever reason there's a much longer book and reconsidering this what does it mean to be Chinese what is legitimacy in government why is it quote unquote the Mandate of Heaven that all of China should be unified under the rule of one man oh these incredibly simple brutal ideas those have retained currency and gravity and weight they're still connected to the idea of what it means to be Chinese of what it means for something for a given government to be the legitimate ruler of China and of course I guess part of the magic these ancient texts have is just that China never had the sort of radical discontinuity in its history created by Egypt converting to Islam it's very difficult to imagine what if Egyptians today still worshipped the same gods and goddesses that were worshipped in ancient Veronica Cho what if it was still Osiris and Isis the various gods with what if that still was the predominant culture in Egypt albeit that it had evolved through various permutations various adaptations as the centuries go by as happens in every culture I mean Catholicism today is not entirely continuous with Catholicism 1,000 years ago there are discontinuities within that can we imagine a world in which there was greater cultural continuity in Egypt and in which people really cared about not just the symbolic but the narrative and legal basis for the legitimacy of the rule of Pharaohs in HTE were some of that you know carried forward and was still part of the debate today I think I mean it reflects both the weakness and the strength of Chinese culture the weakness of being one of the last countries to have no claim to democracy just refusing the whole idea that government is by the people and for the people they cling to these ideas that education and writing the exams confers legitimacy they cling to these ideas that their ancient history their connection to Jin Chuang and the Han Dynasty and the unity of the Chinese people and the mandate and under heaven and the greatness and glory of these ancient texts and ancient monuments and our key our key art and archaeology of ancient China they they cling to this in a way that modern Italy does not cling to ancient Rome why is one person the leader of Italy and not another well because you voted for him it's kind of simple doesn't mean they have no interest in each one if some interest but I mean there isn't this powerful sense that the legitimacy and ideology of the ruler of Italy today must connect to the philosophy of Cicero from you know ancient Rome to follow the Roman Republic rise the Empire in that stuff that history I'm really being since there was this I really think that history does not matter to Italy as passionately and powerfully as the history of the first emperor in China still matters to the Communist Party in China today and still matters to Chinese people today not just the intellectual lead I think the working class the middle class people of people of average education people who just finished high school and went to the workforce believe it or not sincerely I still think this political history matters today the formation of Chinese state ideology has an uncanny continuity that survived the rise and fall of Mao Zedong's communism