Chinese & Western Political Philosophy: Fundamental Differences.

wanted to make a brief video talking
about the most fundamental differences between the Chinese and english-speaking Western European approach to political science to politics in practice these differences to some extent exist in ancient philosophies but they primarily exist in the minds and attitudes and beliefs of people here and now today so to give an example the influence of the work of the Xiang John Chu the book of Lord Shang is all we call it in English it doesn't really matter if you want to construct in your mind a feeble that this has some kind of broad cultural significance that the average Chinese person knows or that somehow reaches children and their cribs or as a fable the reality is we have plenty of evidence of political leaders including an historical figure like Mao Zedong studying it and writing essays on it in school it has very real political influence here and now even though it is a part of classical or ancient Chinese culture so in the same way you could construct a theory that the philosophy of Machiavelli may or may not be influential in Italy today I don't know maybe Machiavelli is more influential in Italian politics than he is in American politics or French politics or something another example being Napoleon Bonaparte how many politicians today have read anything written by Napoleon Bonaparte or written about the history of Napoleon Bonaparte I think in Western culture that might certainly would be a specialized area of study before you would make the claim that the historical experience of what happened with the Poland was influential today but on the other hand as we all know there are some texts and there are some sets of ideas that no one would really question the significance of everything I'm talking about here in terms of East and West is on that level of self-evident obvious Ness and yet I think if you'll stick with me for just a few minutes the three fundamental points I'm going to make in this video probably we're not all that obvious to you number one is the contrast between the great centralizing tendency of the Chinese Empire and the balance of powers theory in European and Western civilization it is so commonplace as to be a meaningless canard that Europeans when teaching when giving university lectures to one another you know in Europe and United States it's so commonplace for them to say oh the unique thing about the history of China is this obsession with unifying the Empire and there are quotations that are rolled out the Empire United must be divided the Empire divided must be United this sense that somehow the course of Chinese history is an epic struggle to unify this enormous territory that's linguistically and culturally diverse and can never be peaceful unified what I find lacking is any honest appraisal of what you are contrasting this to so I was just talking to my girlfriend about the political history of India it would be very different if we were having an honest appraisal of the political history of China over let's say just a 1000 year period to the same period of 1000 years in India or the same period of 1,000 years in Europe and I found all of my professors in departments of politics and the department's of Asian Studies really incredibly reluctant to have this sort of honest reckoning and look let's admit it right now what's the ultimate taboo what does nobody want to talk about what is situated geographically right in the middle in terms of trade routes between China and Europe between India and Europe it's gravy ax have you heard of Saudi Arabia it's one of the most powerful countries in the world today it's one of the most influential empires wave after wave of Islamic imperialism what about that over a period of 1,000 years can we compare that to China is China really obsessed with conquest and centralization compared to say the Mughal Empire compared to any of the Muslim empires that Rosenfeld a lot of these people including professors here in the Department of Asian Studies at UVic that I have some sympathy for that I like as people their utter ly lacking in any kind of down-to-earth reasonable contrasting approach to talking about politics this way and it's in that down to earth reasonable way that we should approach all politics what is the contrast between China's supposed obsession with unifying and centralizing the Empire and what happened in Europe just 300 years ago Europe was completely dominated by the concept of the balance of powers and they fought Wars again and again not to establish any one Empire having hegemony over all the rest but on the contrary to preserve a perpetual balance of multiple roughly equally powerful empires each being counter posed against the other Austria could not be allowed to unify with Germany the German states plural why the balance of powers why was the nation of Belgium created we recently saw the museum's of national history in Belgium and military so why did they create Belgium because the British and the Russians and other foreign powers but especially the British said no no if we allow Belgium and France to become one country France will be too powerful if we allow Belgium and the Netherlands to come one country if we allow Belgium to become part of the Dutch Empire then the Dutch Empire will be too powerful we must preserve the balance of powers what what would happen if Spain and France became one country it was gonna happen it was prevented by a war that all of Europe basically participated in ended with his ever call the Treaty of Utrecht France and Spain had to be prevented from unifying and in a bizarre way even the the state managing of power from Rome on a small scale within Italy in the Mediterranean and the whole of Europe the idea of keeping more or less equally balanced powers constantly at each other's throat was the core of European political science it was hardwired into our concept of diplomacy our concept of even why aristocrats exist and why everstik rats intermarry and why their negotiate with each other and it is in a word complete madness it's a formula for perpetual war within Europe and also without Europe outside of Europe in South America North America the colonization of Africa the colonization of Asia and it's a very strange parallel universe history to ask how would any of these things have played out if just if we had just allowed Austria and Germany Naches Austria the austro-hungarian Empire which was much bigger than Austria to unify with the German states why why couldn't France and Spain become one country or whatever why couldn't the Dutch and the Belgians I don't even care who what why couldn't we have formed larger or even just one Empire one Emperor one democracy whatever you want to imagine for all of Europe it was because of the fascination with the balance of power as ideology utterly a part of an aristocratic worldview in Europe that is now in some ways disappeared I would say the last sincere proponents of the balance of powers ideology were the people who used to surround me in academia the people who sincerely lamented the end of the Soviet Union the end of communism in Europe because it meant the end of a quote/unquote multipolar system in which the Soviet Union held the United States in check in the United States held the Soviet Union check and many countries around the world were allied with one of these two poles that is a balance of powers mentality the assumption that the world would be a better place if it were constantly on the edge of nuclear war and if places like Afghanistan had body counts seedings 1 million because of the struggles between different branches of the Communist Party to control its and various anti-communist machinations to drive out the communists etc the incredibly blood-soaked history of Afghanistan during the Cold War of course I could throw in here examples of Cambodia Laos Vietnam than many other places around the world where the Cold War was not really so cold but quite hot not even to mention South Korea versus North Korea etc etc it's madness that is the balance of powers ideology and I can say to you sincerely I have never once been at a single political science lecture on any period of European or Western world history that even questioned the balance of powers ideology everything else has been questioned including just warrior Chi European imperialism all kinds of things but that the balance of powers notion is one of the most influential in our culture and it's only from that perspective that it seems like madness that all of China should have one capital city what's so crazy about that it means that no two provinces of China orbit each other that's very fundamentally what it means it means they have one army and one currency one one form of economic unit of trade etc etc as you guys know with history China definitely doesn't mean they have one language it doesn't mean they have one Church they didn't have a Roman Catholic Church they didn't have those other forms of unifying and oppressive elements so I think this is still today one of the most powerful warping factors in terms of mutual perception and misperception of Europe versus versus the Chinese world number two on my list these are a little bit quicker the last two of the three is the concept of rule of law as such there are a lot of misconceptions about this I think Europeans like to imagine that in Europe alone we have this really high estimate of the value of the rule of law whether that is attributed to the Roman Empire or maybe some local king Charlamagne in France and Germany or whatever some some beloved king in the history of England that somehow Europeans value that the rule of law and the Chinese not this is this is false it is true that the concept of rule of law is different in Europe China India and the Muslim world that would be a really great four-way comparison to teach political history I've never seen it done um but if we're just contrasting China to Europe the text I already mentioned the Shang jewel the book of Lord Shang is this really useful really rapid introduction to ste test attitudes towards law and order in history of China and again Mao Zedong personally read it was influenced by it I think every single politically sophisticated person in China studied this either formally in university I think the book of Lord Shang is more widely right in China today than the United States Constitution is read within the United States not that many people that states a good percentage don't get me wrong so it is it is a really mega influential work and in that book the book of Lord Shang it's stated with a brutal simplicity that can never be translated that you are better off being ruled by a bunch of gang rapists I'll say a bit more why it says that Chinese you're better off having rulers who are a bunch of gang rapists but who follow written law as opposed to having good man or the best of all possible man but who rule personally who just rule as men without the rule of law this is a paraphrase from memory but as you can imagine one of the things that stood out to me and I first read that I was looking at the English and the Chinese is this the use of the word for rape in there and I do think it's really specifically alluding the fact that like in most ancient cultures in pre-modern China conquest was really linked to rape and gang rape and you see that throughout pre-modern literature that when when a city was conquered or sacked we use these things that sack of Rome we use the word sack and looted in that looting and pillaging and conquest did really involve rape and it was gang-raped by military men so it was not in some abstract sense that you were saying being ruled by a bunch of gang rapists the type of people who conquered and came into power by force very often were men with that kind of background in their resume but it's saying what really matters is written law above all else before Ellis that having an evil man having a tear again it's not even that implausible having a conqueror who's committed unspeakable atrocities unspeakable atrocities that's how he came into power she's often true at the start of a new dynasty in China or after any given war the winners the people who came out on tight top the winners and the people who came out on top may have been the most brutal the most ruthless the most unscrupulous they've committed atrocities but what's crucial in separating them from mere bandits who've gone into power is the belief in written law so I have to say it's this is something where I feel like Western political science political philosophies mainstream politics has almost inverted the role of east and west I don't feel we have that and again I mean it's surreal to say Mao Zedong personally was was actually profound Lee influenced by this too it may have been true in ancient Athens that's actually topic for another video they talk about what was the role of written law in ancient Athens but there's no doubt that today in every Western democracy I'm familiar with it's the moral character of the people it's the spirit of the men the particular men or women who hold office who interpret the law in the Supreme Court the same one sentence fragment in the law in the Supreme Court we feel can be interpreted one way or another it can grant gay people rights or can deprive them of rights he told this with no change in their written law I think if anything we're living through a period of time where there is less faith than ever in the Western world in a written law and we all hang on the notion that we can choose morally good people in whom we place our faith hope expectations and optimism including hilariously someone like Barack Obama who utterly failed to deliver on his honest election promises and so on got the Nobel Peace Prize anyway it's on and so forth so that's that that is a very fundamental element and I think I mean I think it really can be said if you asked what today do Chinese people have to believe in not communism because it's a joke you think they don't know then they can't look or you think they can't read you know the little red book by Mao Zedong they can't look at what communism is supposed to be and the reality of what their economy society is do think they can't see the difference between communism in theory and their capitalist society in practice you know do you think they're unaware of that but something they can believe in is written law the rule of law and they do have that affirmed we just had another case I'll get the guys name wrong of a guy his his net worth the amount he took in bribery's was over 100 million US dollars is the numbers are unbelievable but there were ever eat I'm and it's under siege in ping it happens all the time every time an elite member of the government is even executed but stopped put on trial thrown in prison and tortured executed for taking bribes and so on this this doesn't affirm your belief in communism this doesn't affirm your belief in particular man ruling in government that's not what the faith isn't it's the idea that written law has a validity intrinsic to written law as written law apart from the men even if they are terrible people individually collectively as a social class or what have you that the value of law is something that stands quite separately from the value of men who implemented number three has to do with the role of both dissent and scientific progress now I will just point out some but I mean all the time I say things and then I google them because I think someone else must have said it before me and again again I'm shocked no one has made the point before in the English language or that I can find through Google so this may be something I'm the first person say there's a really important sense in which political dissent and scientific progress are one and the same thing in Western culture Copernicus and Galileo alright and this is so Copernicus and Galileo the fundamental discovery that the earth goes around the Sun that the design of the solar system inverting the assumptions of the Catholic Church this is yes it is in part a scientific discovery but its whole significance for us in Western civilization and again every area type person knows this story definitely in Europe I think to a lesser extent the United States and Canada it's a crucial turning point in the history of European civilization the emergence from the Dark Ages into the Renaissance so the scientific breakthroughs that really begin with Galileo or at least at least how we imagine it how we tell the story how we tell the fable begin with Galileo standing up to the the Catholic Church what is Galileo he's a dissident being persecuted and put in prison by the government yes by the church by an era when you know government and church are pretty much one of the same right he doesn't just symbolize scientific progress he symbolizes political dissent and again even if it is fictional that that is how we imagine Charles Darwin I'm not going to give a hundred examples here guys but you could we imagine Charles Darwin even guys who just invent new new technologies new forms engineer but we imagine Charles Darwin as standing outside the church and outside of government and writing these shocking treaties is the shocking new political ideas and then him being a dissident and the establishment inveighing against him and so on and in the end the truth must win this is really the Western narrative of scientific progress and that idea is utterly lacking in Chinese civilization not the thing in we have what you don't know what it's a fable it's a fable in both the east and west how did the United States put a man on the moon was it because of dissidents standing outside the White House and saying you politicians don't know how to put a man on the moon but I do was it because of a figure like Galileo you know dissident you know complain yes the government is something was it that the plucky underdog standing up to political power no you know an unbelievable amount of taxpayers money was poured into a government program that was completely hierarchical and top-down a lot of scientific progress comes from the center comes from the elite levels as an is handed down and the point is here the Chinese in terms of how they remember the history of scientific progress and their relationship between Authority the government the Emperor even religion in as much as Chinese religion is this diffused tradition of Buddhism Confucianism and Taoism and other sources no for them the concept of even scientific progress but I think all progress is something radiating out from the center top-down from the hierarchy and where they fundamentally do not value dissent the same way we do because they do not think of dissent in terms of progress and even science in the way that we do okay those are my three points three a not an exclusive list but a list of three really important fundamental differences in the Chinese versus Western European english-speaking approaches to politics not just in ancient history right now in the 21st century