Making China Strong

The Role of Nationalism in Chinese Thinking on Democracy and Human Rights

R. Weatherley

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781349329748, 9780230284616
• eBook ISBN: 9781137313614
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Civil Rights in Law
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Robert Weatherley argues that Chinese perceptions of democracy and human rights have been heavily influenced by the pressing issue of how to make China strong in the face of a perceived threat posed by foreign imperialism, be it military imperialism during the previous two centuries and cultural imperialism in more recent decades.

1

Saving the Empire: Democracy and
Rights in the Late Qing Dynasty

Ideas about democracy and rights were first introduced to Chinese political discourse in the nineteenth century during the final few decades of the Qing dynasty. The context for the introduction of these ideas was the increasing military threat posed by encroaching imperialist powers such as Britain, France and Japan. The hope was that a system of democracy and rights might provide a solution to China’s precarious national predicament by imbuing the population with a sense of loyalty and devotion to the nation and the cause of national salvation. We will see in this chapter that initially the focus was on the limited implementation of rights rather than democracy, specifically collective rights which were aimed at protecting China’s fragile national sovereignty. The Qing regime was particularly keen to enforce a national right to prohibit the further importation of foreign merchandise into China after the outbreak of the First Opium War in 1839. There were also proposals for China to assert its sovereign right to rescind the “unequal treatises” that it had been coerced into signing with aggressive foreign powers.

Later in the century Chinese attention turned to more far-reaching democratic reforms, particularly after the disgrace of military defeat in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–5 which exposed to many in China just how weak their country had become. In order to rectify this grave situation, progressive minded thinkers such as Yan Fu and Liang Qichao and the lesser known Huang Zunxian and Zhang Binglin called for the implementation of a democratic system of politics based on the Western model of constitutional monarchy. The underlying logic was that if the Chinese people were given a more participatory role in the political system, they would come to feel a greater sense of loyalty to their rulers and so unite steadfastly behind the national objective of ousting the imperialists from Chinese soil. In this way, rights were now seen as the domain of the individual rather than just the collective. Reformers argued that if every person in China could develop a more emphatic and assertive sense of individual rights (a mentality that was sorely lacking from the Confucian moral code) then China as a nation would become strong enough to see off the imperialists. From the outset, therefore, the majority Chinese view was that the enjoyment of democracy and rights was synonymous with a strong nation-state.

This predominantly instrumentalist approach towards political reform had one very significant implication. If democracy was valued purely because of its perceived capacity to embolden the Chinese nation, it could just as easily be abandoned if it was no longer deemed useful in achieving this goal. This is exactly what happened during the late Qing. Although Chapters 2 and 3 cover this in more depth, we will note in this chapter how some of the early exponents of democracy turned towards authoritarianism once they became convinced that this route might better solve China’s national crisis.

One of the most pressing social concerns of the late Qing era was the entrenched subordination of women, as manifested by the unequal treatment of women in law and by the long standing Confucian tradition of foot binding. By the turn of the twentieth century as the Qing empire teetered on the brink of collapse, an increasing number of Chinese women (and some men) began to call for the abolition of sexual inequality in China and the introduction of women’s rights. Some advocates, including the celebrated anarcho-feminist He Zhen, saw this as an end in itself. For He, women should enjoy rights because, like men, they were human beings and were therefore equally entitled to rights. But other thinkers such as Xu Yucheng and Jin Yi, both of whom were quite radical in their feminist perspectives, couched their desire for women’s rights within the familiar context of strengthening the Chinese nation. They believed that China would only become strong if women had the same rights as men.

Despite impassioned calls for the introduction of women’s rights in China, such rights were noticeably absent from the last minute political reforms implemented by the Qing administration. Although the 1908 Principles of the Constitution contained a chapter on rights which did not explicitly exclude women from political participation, the elections that were held at the local, provincial and national level during 1909–11 did not allow women to vote or stand for election. The poor, the uneducated and the religious (amongst others) were also excluded and this, combined with a number of other factors (for example, corruption and voter apathy), meant that late Qing political reforms categorically failed to unite the people behind the nation in the struggle against foreign imperialism.

Confucian democracy and rights?

There has for some time been an academic debate about whether or not an indigenous Confucian understanding of democracy and rights existed in traditional China. Those who argue in favour often locate concepts contained in the Confucian classics to make their point. For example, Joseph Chan (1999, p.218) and to a lesser degree Daniel Bell (2000, p.50) have suggested that the Confucian notion of “benevolence” (ren) can be equated with a belief in human rights. According to the Confucian disciple Mencius, benevolence was common to all men and manifested itself most clearly as human compassion for the welfare of others. So, for example, if a child was about to fall to his death into a well, Mencius believed that any compassionate bystander would rush to save the child regardless of whether or not he was known to the bystander.

Other scholars have tried to formulate a Confucian theory of rights by substantially widening the doctrine of rights so that it encompasses some of the basic tenets of Confucianism. Cheng Chung-ying (1979, pp.16–17) believes that rights in a Confucian context were not substantive but relational. In other words, rights were exercised with a genuine concern for others rather than independently or selfishly. Cheng also suggests that Confucian rights were particularistic rather than universalistic and that they were contingent upon an individual’s status and relationship to those around him. In addition, rights were primarily conceived in collective rather than individual terms and were therefore subordinate to the higher collective interest. Finally, rights derived from the state and were not something which were held or claimed against the state by individuals.

Those who argue against a Confucian theory of human rights point to the inequalities inherent in the social and legal practice of Confucianism. Whilst the philosophy of human rights sees human beings as innately equal in moral worth, Confucian law and society and the philosophy that underpinned it was based on a system of moral inequality which evaluated human morality in accordance with the familial and social status of each individual (Liu and Ge, 1988; Weatherley, 2002). The establishment of this “moral hierarchy” meant that some members of society (for example, government officials, fathers and husbands) were thought to be morally superior to others (for example, common people, sons and wives). This was neatly reflected in the legal system which treated the former more leniently than the latter on account of their higher moral standing, even if an identical offence had been committed (W. Jones, 1974, 1994). We will look at this in more depth later when we discuss the late Qing call for women’s rights. At the heart of this rejection of human rights was the overriding importance attached to the attainment of social harmony since it was the desire for an harmonious society which justified the creation of an hierarchical and therefore unequal social, moral and legal order (Munro, 1977).

The Qing in crisis

Whichever position we might take on this debate, there is little doubt that the first concrete Chinese discussions of democracy and rights emerged during the nineteenth century. The wider backdrop to these discussions was the increasing fragility of the Qing, China’s last dynasty before the collapse of the empire in 1911. The dramatic arrival of the British during the First Opium War and the subsequent ease with which China was sliced open by the British and other imperialist powers during the Second Opium War and the Sino-French War, revealed an alarming disparity in national strength between China and the West. This sparked a vigorous intellectual debate inside China about how best to resist any further foreign intrusion.

The Pure Discussion school (qingyi), which had its philosophical roots in the Southern Song Dynasty (1127–1279), insisted that the only way to repel the imperialists was to remain true to the orthodox principles of Confucianism. By the same token, the prospect of adopting Western methods or ideas was vehemently rejected as heresy (Rankin, 1982). Indeed, Pure Discussion exponents sought to incite the public against Westerners rather than accommodate them. Sometimes this resulted in physical attacks on allegedly pro-Western Chinese officials or on Westerners themselves, most notably during the 1870 Tianjin Massacre which resulted in the deaths of 21 foreigners, mostly French Catholics (Fairbank, 1957).

Thinkers from the Self-Strengthening Movement (1861–95) were more amenable to Western ideas (Wright, 1957) including, as we will see shortly, ideas about democracy and rights. As part of what became known as the ti-yong debate, the Self-Strengtheners insisted that whilst traditional Confucian “essence” (ti) should be preserved, Western “methods” (yong) could be usefully employed by the Qing regime. Although a number of measures were considered, it was mainly in the diplomatic and military fields that significant changes were implemented. On the diplomatic front, this comprised the establishment of a new foreign relations office known as the zongli yamen (Meng, 1962). This body dealt with foreign representatives on an equal, rather than on a superior basis as had previously been the case. In terms of the military, reforms included the introduction of shipbuilding dockyards to help bolster the increasingly besieged Chinese navy, greater investment in Chinese military equipment and the adoption of Western military techniques.

But arguably even these reforms were not particularly radical. According to Cohen (1984, p.24), the accommodation of Western military methods ‘was only a variation on a well-worn Chinese theme. At various points in their long history, the Chinese had been able to accept being tutored in the arts of war by “barbarians”’. Although the zongli yamen was probably more innovative, it was only ever meant to be a temporary measure until the West had been successfully vanquished from Chinese territory. Moreover, the old tributary system was actually retained for neighbouring states such as Korea, Annam and Champa (both now part of Vietnam) (Cohen, 1984, p.24).

We will see later in this chapter how the Qing intensified its reform efforts after China’s 1895 defeat to Japan and then again after Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5. Significantly for our purposes, this comprised a number of political reforms, including a constitution with a chapter devoted to citizens’ rights and the introduction of democratic elections at the local and national level.

The Opium Wars and the rights of the nation

Available sources suggest that late Qing thinkers were initially more interested in instituting a very limited conception of rights, rather than overseeing a comprehensive overhaul of the Chinese political system. Our starting point is the early stages of the First Opium War, specifically the translation in 1840 of ‘The Illustrated Compendium of Coastal Nations’, a compilation of European documents and illustrations commissioned by Guangzhou’s beleaguered Imperial Commissioner Lin Zexu (Angle, 2002, p.104). By way of brief background, it was Lin’s ill-fated attempt to halt the British import of opium that led to the outbreak of the First Opium War (Hanes and Sanello, 2002, pp.37–56; Meyer, 2009, p.127). As is well-documented, Lin authorised Chinese military forces to hold hostage British expatriates living in and around Guangzhou until all the opium being pedalled by merchant ships off China’s southern coast had been surrendered. British government representative Charles Elliot had little option but to accept Lin’s demands and on receipt of over 20,000 chests of opium, Lin gave the order for it to be publicly burnt and the ashes thrown into the Pearl River. This triggered the British attacks. So Lin’s immediate objective in commissioning ‘The Illustrated Compendium’ was to find a way of ending the war and ousting the British from Chinese territory before news reached the Emperor.

A key document contained in ‘The Illustrated Compendium’ was an eight-page translation of extracts from Emmerich de Vattel’s ‘The Law of Nations’, a textbook on international law published in France in 1758. This transcript included a short section extolling every nation’s right to forbid the import of foreign merchandise if it chose to do so. The text opened with the assertion that ‘every state has, consequently, a right to prohibit the entrance of foreign merchandise, and the people who are interested in this prohibition have no right to complain of it, as if they had been refused an office of humanity’ (Angle, 2002, p.105). Given the unwelcome incursions of the British imperialists, this kind of statement was of real interest to Lin as he sought to make it illegal for the British to continue selling their opium in China.

According to Angle (2002, p.105), the translation of “rights” in ‘The Law of Nations’ was not altogether accurate. The Chinese term li was used which means “custom” or “rule”. Whilst this might be of linguistic interest, of greater significance for our study is the wider national context in which extracts from the ‘The Law of Nations’ were translated into Chinese. Lin’s interest in these shorts extracts shows how from the very moment the idea of rights entered Chinese political discourse it was valued for its nation-building potential, specifically how best to resist the British. This set a strong precedent for the predominantly nationalistic conceptualisation of rights that subsequently prevailed in China.

At this early stage, rights were not interpreted as belonging to individuals, but to nations. This way of thinking persisted with the publication in 1864 of ‘The General Laws of the Myriad Nations’, a translation of ‘The Elements of National Law’ published in 1836 by the American jurist Henry Wheaton (Angle, 2002, p.110). As with ‘The Law of Nations’, the background to the publication of this volume was China’s humiliation at the hands of foreign powers, this time during the Second Opium War when the Qing army was defeated by a joint Anglo-French force inferior in number but superior in military capacity (Hanes and Sanello, 2002, pp.176–292). Added to this humbling experience was the subsequent forced signing of a series of “unequal treatises” with Britain, France, Russia and the United States which further highlighted China’s crumbling diplomatic and commercial standing in the world.

With authority from Prince Gong (uncle of the Xianfeng Emperor and head of the zongli yamen) extracts from ‘The General Laws’ were used to successfully procure financial compensation from Prussia following the seizure by a Prussian warship of three Danish merchant vessels that were moored in a Chinese port. The compensation was paid to China because the Prince was able to prove that Prussia had breached China’s territorial rights. This emphasis on the nation as the beneficiary of rights is further reinforced when we see that the term quan, meaning “rights” in Chinese, featured throughout the translation of ‘The General Laws’ as part of the compound zizhu zhi quan meaning “independence” (Angle, 2002, pp.107–8), presumably, in this case, the right to independence from foreign subordination.

The early Self-Strengtheners retained this concept of national rights, again as part of an effort to deal with the foreign threat. Pong (1985, pp.34–5) notes that during a series of internal meetings that took place during 1867 in preparation for negotiations with Western representatives to revise the terms of the “unequal treaties”, rights were equated with ‘preserving China’s authority or control over specific matters’. Another variant of the term for rights discussed during these meetings was liquan meaning, at its simplest level, “economic rights”. This new term was used by Li Hongzhang, one of the founding-fathers of the Self-Strengthening movement, who in referring to a variety of demands made by Western powers noted that:

In addition to these, there are still other demands. Above, none fail to invade our nation’s liquan; below, they inevitably seek to wrest away our merchants’ livelihoods. These can all be denounced on the basis of the upright words of the General Laws of the Myriad Nations: ‘All nations have the quan of protecting their people and administering their financial affairs’ (Angle, 2002, p.113).

Pong suggests that in this national context, liquan actually went beyond a simple understanding of “national economic rights” to mean something much closer to “national economic control” or “national economic sovereignty”:

Thus from its original meaning of China having the ultimate say in protecting its traditional socio-political order from foreign encroachment – a defensive position – the concept of quan and especially its derivation, liquan, had come to connote as well China’s right to pursue its own course of development (Pong, 1985, pp.34–5).

As we will see in Chapter 5, this resonates very loudly in the contemporary era where the official Chinese emphasis is very firmly on the right to national sovereignty and a nation’s right to choose its own path to development.

The emergence of democracy

It was not until later in the nineteenth century that Qing thinkers began to turn their attention towards the idea of democracy and the adoption of a Western-style democratic system equipped with individual rights and basic civil freedoms. Once again, it was the threat from outside that forced the issue, in this case China’s humiliating military defeat to Japan in 1895 (Paine, 2003). As the nineteenth century wore on, the Chinese intelligentsia had become wearily accustomed to the military superiority of Western powers. Although the First Opium War came as a shock, the Second Opium War and the defeat to France in 1885 (Chere, 1989) was not altogether unexpected. But defeat by Japan, China’s “culturally inferior” neighbour, came as a bolt out of the blue and betrayed a gaping chasm between Chinese and Japanese self-strengthening efforts. This realisation inside China went a long way towards extinguishing what were by now the dying embers of the ti-yong debate. Confronted by the very real possibility that China might be ignominiously carved up by the West and Japan, most Qing reformers began to insist that national survival should be attained at any cost by adopting whatever methods were necessary, at the expense of Confucian ti. Western diplomatic and military techniques alone were insufficient. If the Qing and ultimately China was to survive, it was argued, the Western values of democracy and the political and constitutional structures that encompassed them had to be wholeheartedly embraced.

In formulating their early ideas about democracy, Qing reformers were heavily influenced by the works of classic liberal Western theorists such as John Stewart Mill, Herbert Spencer, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Baron de Montesquieu. Other sources of Western scholarly influence were less easily associated with traditional democratic values, most notably Charles Darwin, his “bulldog” Thomas Huxley and the relati...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Saving the Empire: Democracy and Rights in the Late Qing Dynasty
• 2 Building a New China: Democracy and Rights in the Early Republican Period (1912–28)
• 3 Towards Authoritarianism: Withholding Democracy and Rights for the Good of the Nation (1928–49)
• 4 Protecting the People’s Republic: Mass Democracy and Class Rights in the Mao and Early Post-Mao Eras
• 5 From Military Imperialism to Cultural Imperialism: Democracy and Rights in the Post-Mao Era
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index