XI
While it was generally alleged in the West that the
Chinese were
scientifically inept and militarily weak,
it also gradually became apparent
after 1860 that
China had staying-power as well. How was it possible
that the Chinese with all their adversities continued
to go their own way
and to remain singularly unim-
pressed with
the material superiority of the West?
Chinese immigrants proved to be
industrious, willing,
and honest workers who adapted successfully to
new
environments. The Chinese of the treaty ports were
also quick to
learn the ways of the West. The govern-
ment
in Peking, despite its obvious weakness, showed
a remarkable ability to
play off one Western power
against the other to preserve China from
partition.
Nationalist demands for the reform of the Manchu
government
and the development of an embryonic
industrial base in the Yangtse valley
during the 1860's
provoked Westerners to begin probing for the sources
of China's seemingly unquenchable vitality.
The basis for this new vision of China was not found
simply in the increased
knowledge and understanding
that resulted from closer contact. It also
emerged from
the belief that there was something to discover in
Chinese culture that the West did not possess at all
or possessed only to a
lesser degree. Growing disillu-
sionment
with the nationalistic, materialistic, capital-
istic, and individualistic society of the West drove
leading
thinkers to seek for new values and directions.
Joseph Ferrari, an Italian
parliamentarian, wrote a
comparative study called
La
Chine et l'Europe (1867)
which denies that China is
barbarous, static, or isolated
and asserts that its civilization merits
attention as an
historical counterpoise to Europe. Eugène Simon,
a
French agricultural expert and consul in China, pub-
lished
La cité chinoise (1885; cf. Fustel de Coulanges,
La cité antique, 1864), which idealizes
China as a
peasant society where liberty in all its
forms—political,
economic, religious, and
intellectual—is realized.
Simon's book, which was very popular,
prophesied that
all European attempts to subject China to industriali-
zation, colonization, or
modernization would fail be-
cause of the
astounding vitality of the rural nation and
its naturalistic civilization.
On contemporaries, Simon's
book, along with Richthofen's of about the same
pe-
riod, had an impact out of all proportion
to its intrinsic
importance. Paul Ernst, the German poet, was inspired
by Simon to adulate the collectivist peasant culture
of China for giving a
higher place to spiritual than
to material values. Later in life Ernst took
most of his
illustrations and inspirations from his study of Chinese
art, poetry, and Taoism. He eventually concluded that
China offered the
rest of the world a unique meta-
physical
revelation.
Tolstoy began to take an interest in China following
the religious crisis he
experienced in 1884. He read
widely, especially in the books of T. T.
Meadows and
Eugène Simon, on the political and social
organization
of China. Like Simon he was intrigued with Taoism
and the
peasant society of China and in his publications
he urged the Chinese not
to follow the way of the
West. He discerned a spiritual kinship among
China,
Russia, and the other great agrarian countries which
set them
apart from the industrialized, materialistic
West. He was especially
attracted by the Taoist doc-
trine that men by
their own efforts achieve harmony
with nature and that the role of
government should
be kept to a minimum. He also responded
affirmatively
to Confucian theories about the moral and immoral
effects of music. Tolstoy so greatly admired China that
he asserted just
before his death in 1910: “Were I young
I would go to
China” (Bodde, p. 29).
John Dewey first lectured at Peking in 1912, and
again after the First World
War. Along with his pupil,
Hu Shih, Dewey was disturbed by the popularity
of
“isms” in China. He urged Chinese and
Westerners
alike to study the problems themselves, propose work-
able solutions, and avoid the panaceas of
socialism,
anarchism, or bolshevism. Dewey was convinced that
socialism could have no roots in China because of its
low level of
industrial development. Bertrand Russell,
a devoted pacifist in World War I, spent one year
lecturing in
China during 1920. Although he was
known internationally as a socialist,
Russell felt that
industrialization in China could best be promoted by
a partially nationalized system of capitalism. In the
articles which he
wrote for Dial and the Atlantic
Monthly in 1921, Russell unabashedly asserted that the
Chinese
were more “laughter-loving than any other
race,” not
self-assertive either nationally or individ-
ually, avaricious for money for enjoyment rather than
power, and
socialist and scientific rather than capital-
istic and mechanistic in temperament. R. H. Tawney,
the British
historian and member of the League of
Nations Commission (1931-32) on the
reorganization
of education in China, likewise held a romantic notion
of the historical isolation of China and its effects upon
the growth of
institutions, ideas, and practices.
While disenchantment grew in the twentieth-
century West over China's inability to solve its own
political
and economic problems, inquiring minds
nonetheless continued to examine
China's past institu-
tions for fresh
ideas. Henry A. Wallace, as a progressive
American student of agriculture,
was inspired by
studying the economic principles of Confucius to ad-
vocate experimenting in the United States
with the
“ever-normal granary” idea of the Chinese.
When
Wallace became Secretary of Agriculture in 1933, he
continued to
work for a program that would provide
a constant supply of grain at all
times without serious
price fluctuations. In 1938 Wallace's program
became
part of the Agricultural Adjustment Act, a piece of
legislation
that owed its direct inspiration to Chinese
ideas and practices. At the end
of the Second World
War Wallace called for the internationalization of
the
“ever-normal granary” idea as a necessary step on
the
road to world recovery. In response to Wallace's sug-
gestions and the pressing needs of the
time, the United
Nations created a World Food Bank to establish and
manage a world food reserve. Heavy political attacks
from various nations
quickly brought an end to this
scheme.
Twentieth-century efforts at world history have self-
consciously sought to make room for China and to
integrate its civilization into the totality of history.
H. G. Wells, in
his Outline of History (1920) deplores
the fact that
Chinese culture has received such a
minimal treatment in world history.
While he strives
to bring China into his work at each appropriate
point,
his isolated paragraphs on China are sketchy to the
point of
being unintelligible. Oswald Spengler's The
Decline of
the West (1918-22) treats Chinese civili-
zation as an organism with a life cycle of its own that,
after
an initial flowering, fell into decay and putrefac-
tion. Arnold Toynbee in his monumental A Study of
History (1934-61) assigns Chinese civilization a philo-
sophical equivalence to Europe. But
the actual amount
of space devoted to Chinese civilization is nonethe-
less relatively slight. Toynbee's
ideas about the ori-
gins of the Yellow River
civilization as a response to
a challenging environment and his
chronological divi-
sions of Chinese history
have been severely attacked
by specialists. In William McNeill's The Rise of the
West (1963), China is for the first
time integrated
intelligibly into the history of the human community
by the stress that is placed on its relationship to
rather than its
isolation from other centers of civiliza-
tion.
Academic study of China in the West during the
twentieth century has mainly
been characterized by
greater attention to command of the language, to
in-
ternal developments, and to case
studies of village life,
social classes, bureaucracy, and the effects of
moderni-
zation and Westernization.
Translations from popular
literature have focused upon the novels and
dramas
of social and individual discontent. Western literary
creations
about China, especially those of Alice Tisdale
Hobart and Pearl Buck,
glorified the sturdiness of the
common man in meeting adversity and the
satisfactions
found by Chinese of all classes in the fullness and
vitality of the ancient culture. The resistance of China
to Japanese
aggression reawakened interest in the study
of China's relations with its
neighbors and in the na-
tion's ability to
survive in spite of foreign depredations
and internal political divisions.
To the end of World
War II the belief was commonly held that the
social
and cultural ties of traditional China were still solid
enough
to withstand fundamental changes.
