China and the World in the Twentieth Century

Yizi Chen

Center for Modern China

The human world in the twentieth century has experienced unprecedented disasters as well as unprecedented progress. Standing at the threshold of the 21st century, it is imperative that we take a serious look at both the keys to success and the lessons of failures in order to avoid unnecessary detours on our road to a brighter future.

Before civilization reached its most mature stage, human history oftentimes followed the “rule of the jungle” while also witnessed numerous examples of “Robinhood .” The human development did not enter the modern era until Europe began to experience the Renaissance which emphasized humanism, the religious reformation which recognized individuals’ direct access to God, the Enlightenment which ushered in the concepts of natural rights, and the Industrial Revolution which eliminated serfdom. What kinds of progress and what kinds of disasters have been bestowed upon the human world during the 20th century？How has China fared？ This paper attempts to address these questions.

I. The Remarkable Human Progress

The historic progress of the 20th century is evident primarily in two areas: the improvement of systems and the development of science and technology. As human beings have their innate weaknesses and carry with them the original sin , the humankind has not yet discovered a flawless life style either individually or collectively. Nevertheless, the improvement of systems has given rise to dramatic changes in the relationship between individuals and society. Under the banner of “natural rights, freedom, democracy and the rule of law,” the human society has achieved unprecedented progress. Most notably if the fact the two United Nations human rights agreements have been accepted by most countries as the fundamental principles.

After trials and errors for several thousand years, a modern economic, legal and political system based on human nature have finally appeared on the horizon, thus providing individuals with equal rights and equal opportunities, and enabling human intelligence and capability to reach greater potentials. In the over one-thirds of the countries which have achieved modernization, the progress did not result from the change of human nature, nor can it be attributed to preaching or the use of force; rather, it is the product of systematic improvement. As the development theory indicates, among the five elements (labor, resource, capital, technology and organization) that determine the process of development, organization is the key. Here “organization” refers to a modern type of structure; i.e., the improved institutional environment and various systems. During the past fifty years, the impressive progress of Hong Kong and Taiwan can serve as good examples, in contrast to the backwardness of mainland China.

During the 20th century science and technology have also undergone miraculous development. More and more people are living within a more rational environment. With endless new inventions and creations and an even increasing amount of material wealth, “to conquer nature” has long ceased to be a dream. As the relationship between human beings and nature has improved tremendously, a significant number of people are enjoying the fruits of modern material civilization; theses fruits are in fact being spread globally at lightening speed. From the theory of relativity and the discovery of atoms to the explosion of nuclear bombs, from the satellites orbiting heavenly bodies to Apollo=s landing on the moon; from the theory of genes to the discovery of penicillin and DNA, from the birth of tube babies to the cloning of animals, from the steam engine and locomotives to radio waves; from the radio, television to home computers and the consequential Internet revolution, modern science and technology have permeated into every corner of human existence, and are exerting a continouus impact on human thoughts and actions.

II. The Colossal Disasters

On the other hand, however, the 20th century has also witnessed colossal disasters, reflected in the aggression of fascism and the experiment of communism. Interestingly, both fascism and communism appeared in the name of nationalism; both attempted to change people and the world through the use of force, and both have brought hereto unheard disasters in history. As a result, millions of people have either become victims of wars, persecution and hunger or slaves of fear.

Regardless of how Hitler upheld the banner of the “noble Aryans” race or how Tojo chanted the slogan of establishing a “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,” as both conducted naked racial and military aggression against the Jews, the Chinese and any other “insubordinate” peoples, their fascist actions rooted in virulent nationalism were easy to recognize and trigger public outrage. As a result, even though both generated horrendous destruction the human world and led to the deaths of 50 million people, they could only last for more than a decade. Communism, on the other hand, was different. During the early stages of capitalism. a group of idealists and moralists, concerned with issues of social justice, put forward ideas of socialism. That kind of utopianism, which resulted from the harsh realities of capitalism, was in fact a rather positive development. However, once the social ideals were forcefully transformed into a kind of “utopian project,” disasters began to strike. Marx’s communism had already pushed the theories of socialism to the extreme, the experiments conducted by Lenin, Stalin and Mao Zedong brought endless sufferings to the peoples in the former Soviet Union and China. The problem is that all these experiments were conducted in the name of “egalitarianim,” “justice”under the pretext of “for the people” or “for the humankind.” Consequently, these slogans were easily accepted in exonomically underdeveloped societies, particularly by the under -privileged sector of the population. When the endeavors generated doubts and inquiries, those who held their own independent and different views were regarded as “asversaries, ” and “anti-Party enemies” and were subjected to endless persecution, purge or even execution. According to reliable statistics, during the Soviet experiment with the so-called “communist communes” in the 1920s, over 10 million people died of starvation. During the 1930s programs of forced collectivization led to the deaths of nearly another 20 million; those who died of unnatural causes amounted to another 20 million. In China, when the Great Leap Forward Movement failed, starvation claimed the lives of 43 million Chinese . From 1949 to 1979, as many as over 80 million people lost their lives due to unnatural circumstances. An overseas Chinese in Cambodia told me that originally there were 2 million people in the Cambodian capital; however, policies of ruthless killing and expulsion by the Pol Pot government left he place with only 50,000 residents. As a matter of fact, as communism lasted longer than fascism, its destruction was far more serious, far more deceptive and far more tragic.

The development of human society is a process of natural growth and systematic evolution. None of the countries that have achieved progress and modernization in the 20th century did so through fragmentation of their societies and history or the denial of their tradition. Almost invariably their success was achieved through continuing improvement of their systems and environments. However, the communist revolutions in both the former Soviet Union and China, in implementing their “utopian projects,” violated human nature and turned the political, economic and social system upside down. The most virulent danger of this system lies in the fact that it destroyed the social, cultural, economic and political relations in their respective countries that had evolved for thousands of years. This is the root causes for the tardiness and difficulty that have confronted Russia who has been struggling to embark on its road to modernization after the demise of the former Soviet Union. The vicious results of the communist experiments will be felt even during the next century, for the will continue to generate various problems for the world.

III. A Misery- Laden China

In Lao Chan’s Travel Notes, Huang Longzi said that it is those “capable people” who are primarily responsible for many things in the word that have gone wrong. This remark should serve as a “warning bell ” for those who are trying to “reform China” for it has been proven true throughout Chinese history. For the most part of modern Chinese history after the Opium War, representatives from all walks of life, particularly those from the intellectual arenas, were often restless and eager in playing “catching up” in an ever increasingly “leftist ”and radical pursuit of modernization; howerve, few have systematically studied the experiences and lessons of the countries that have succeeded in this endeavor. A telling example is the fact that many radical intellectuals, driven by their idealistic expectations, have chanted the slogan of “freedom” and “democracy” while at the same time objecting to private ownership. They obviously failed to understand the connection between the practice of private ownership and the system of democracy.

The Republic of China , the first democratic republic in Asia established by Dr.Sun Yat- sen, had already made tremendous strides toward modernization during the 1920s and 1930s, but its process , the only one that could have succeeded, was unfortunately halted by Japanese military aggression. After 1949, it is true that China gained its independence, but Mao Zedong’ series of communist emperiments have not only brought forth unseen destruction to the country, but also forced it into an all- around retreat.

As analyzed by Russian scholars, Marxism was a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, whereas Lenin, Stalin and Mao represented the peasant mentality of the post-agricultural and pre-industrial societies. The communist utopia that they tried to implement shared some commonalties that had characterized agrarian socialism , and what they opposed was the very foundation of a modern society. They fought against a market economy built upon private ownership and free enterprise and instead implemented state ownership and planned economy. They opposed constitutional democracy based on the human rights and a legal system and instead instigated class struggle and insisted on a one-party dictatorship. They objected to cultural pluralism built upon an open and citizen-centered society and instead imposed Marxism and the leaders’ “thoughts” on their peoples as the national ideology. All the countries where communism was practiced experienced whole-sale regression in that barbarism replaced civilization; backwardness attacked progress; ignorance feigned knowledge and falsehoods usurped truth.

Worse yet, in China backwardness, ignorance, barbarism and cruelty surpassed those in the former Soviet Union and other East European countries. Mao Zedong not only copied Stalinism but also prolonged the system of wartime communism while at the same time inheriting the tradition of Oriental despotism. He implemented all-encompassing state ownership , planned economy, one-party rule and personal dictatorship while instigating endless class struggle. He established a unique status hierarchy that highly stratified rights of production, while divided all organizations and individuals into several different categories for more effective control. The “work unit” system , for instance, created a crippling system of dependence and enslavement. The deception and persecution suffered by many Chinese are unimaginable and incomprehensible.

Reforms in all socialist countries are, after all, efforts at returning to common sense and mainstream. The reforms in China are, in a way, efforts at “atoning previous crimes with good deeds, ”for the thirty-year rule by the Communist Party caused unspeakable sufferings to China as a nation. The problems were deepened after 1989, when the public demonstration against official corruption and special privileges and the public demands for democracy and freedom were ruthlessly cracked down. Failing to further the reforms and self-reconstruct on the part of the Chinese leadership, even greater chaos will probably be looming in the not so distant future.

Once chaos befalls China, the ordinary people are the still the ones to suffer. To prevent such a scenario from happening, the only way out is to push for economic and political reforms. One has to realize that the contemporary democratic movement is different from the revolutions in history in that it is a movement aimed at gaining individual equal rights and opportunity rather than a movement that was marked by the replacement of one dynasty by the other or the overthrow of one group of people by the other. Although China has a long way to go before it can achieve true modernization, it is the innate human nature and that of every Chinese to want to forsake poverty while seeking wealth, and to oppose autocracy while aspiring for freedom. A market economy and political democratization are the dual necessities for any country that wants to join the modernized global community. It is true that the realization of such goals takes time; it is true that every nation has its own set of realities, but so far no country that has gone against such a trend has succeeded. Those parties and leaders that attempt to stem the trend will eventually be discarded by history itself.

For the Chinse, the 20th century is one full of difficulties and sufferings. On the occasion commemorating the A May Fourth Movement and the 1989 pro-democracy movement, the best way to remember the pioneers and heir spirits is to recognize the historical trend and press on with our efforts at promoting comprehensive and constructive reforms in order to achieve a peaceful transition into a modern society, thus enabling our future generations to avoid the hardships that we have experienced.