Chinese culture and its development

Bridgeport, CT, United States, November 17 — Although there has been a period of time in recent Chinese history of absolute condemnation of, and separation from, its traditional past, China seems to be gearing itself back toward finding its own definitive identity. The effort to establish Confucian institutions internationally is but one of these signs.

A fellow student at the University of Bridgeport was doing a paper on China. After seeing the display of China’s history and culture at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, her paper was going to be on the ability of certain nations to develop into a modern nation without losing their culture and traditions. However, she didn’t know much about China’s attempted departure from its past.

I wanted to post a hypothesis: China’s culture and history has created a society of people that are good objects. (For the purpose of this discussion I want to establish “the subject position” to be the one standing in the higher position, the king, teacher, father, as opposed to “the object position” who stands in a position under “the subject”, the king's 'subjects,' the student, the son.)

While individualism developed in the West, and with it independence and freedom, the East was focused on the interrelatedness of human society and its harmonious existence. Whereas Christianity and the concept of individual salvation played a role in this process in the Western world, the Confucian tradition painted a picture of the ideal man, a "junzi," to live by and thereby create a harmonious society around him.

However, the hope that Christianity gained from the person of Jesus was not brought about by any single historical figure in Chinese history. Among others, the Chinese response to the corrupt reality of human society was the formation of the Legalist school of thought that taught a Machiavellian form of rule over the masses (almost two thousand years before Machiavelli).

This down-to-earth quality of Chinese tradition took form in the emphasis placed upon those that stand in “the object position” to act in the right manner. A son is to act with filial piety towards his father; those under the king were to be loyal and obedient; one is to be humble in front of an elder.

This was the cultural mentality that was rooted into the Eastern mindset over the two thousand years or more after the time of Confucius.

Even though it can be said that its communist experiences really did damage the form that Chinese tradition took, the essential character of the Chinese might take more than half a century to alter. Some have compared the current communist rule in China to another dynasty, and it might be said that the Chinese mentality of being a "good object" to whoever stands in the “subject position” might be the fuel that has allowed the growth and establishment of this new dynasty… (to be continued).