Trends in the Study of Chinese Political Culture

8/9/2019 Trends in the Study of Chinese Political Culture

1/11

Trends in the Study of Chinese Political Culture

Author(s): Peter R. Moody, Jr.Source: The China Quarterly, No. 139 (Sep., 1994), pp. 731-740Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the School of Oriental and AfricanStudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/655139

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2/11

State

of

the

Field

Trends

in

the

Study

of Chinese Political

Culture

Peter

R.

Moody,

Jr.

A

systematic

concern

with

political

culture

has its

heritage

in

the

Enlight-

enment and

19th-century sociology,'

if not ancient

times,

but came to

the

fore in

political

science with the

post-Second

World War behavioural

revolution and the

emergence

of new states whose formal institutions

were

similar

to Western models

but whose

politics

did not follow

the

Western

pattern.2

The mainstream

political

science version

of

political

culture was associated

with

structure-functionalism and modernization

theory;

a

premise

was that

technological

change

could

help generate

modernizing

mentalities,

while traditional mentalities could inhibit mod-

ernizing

technical

change.3

Modernization

theory

went out of

fashion

in

the late 1960s

for a

variety

of

ideological,

intellectual and

empirical

reasons,

and the

political

cultural

approach

fell from

favour

along

with it.

More

recently,

it

seems,

scholars

have

returned

to an

interest

in

culture,

and some

even

place

culture at the heart of

emerging political cleavages.4

Culture

is an

ambiguous

concept, enjoying

a

plethora

of definitions.

The mainstream

political

science

approach

has been to treat it as

virtually

synonymous

with attitudes and values toward

politics, taking

the culture

of a

society

as

a kind

of sum of the attitudes of

the

persons

in

the

society.

Political culture

is

the set of

attitudes, beliefs,

and

feelings

about

politics

current in a nation at a

given

time. 5

The

paradigmatic

work remains

The Civic

Culture,6

an

exploration

of

1. Michael Brint, A Genealogy of Political Culture (Boulder: Westview, 1991).

2.

Gabriel Almond and James Coleman

(eds.),

The Politics

of

the

Developing

Areas

(Princeton:

Princeton

University

Press,

1961).

3. Daniel

Lerner,

The

Passing

of

Traditional

Society: Modernizing

in

the

Middle

East

(Glencoe:

Free

Press,

1958);

Everett

E.

Hagan,

On

the

Theory

of

Social

Change:

How

Economic Growth

Begins

(Homewood:

Dorsey

Press,

1962);

David

Apter,

The

Politics

of

Modernization

(Chicago: University

of

Chicago

Press,

1965).

4. Gabriel

Almond,

A

Discipline

Divided: Schools and

Sects

in

Political Science

(Newbury

Park:

Sage,

1990),

chs.

5,

6;

Harry

Eckstein,

A

culturalist

theory

of

political

change,

American

Political Science

Review,

Vol.

82,

No.

3

(September

1988),

pp.

789-804;

Fritz

Gaenslen,

Cultureand

decision-making

in

China,

Japan,

Russia,

and

the

United

States,

World

Politics,

Vol.

39,

No.

1

(October 1986),

pp.

78-103;

Ronald

Inglehart,

The

renaissance of political culture, American Political Science Review, Vol. 82, No. 4

(December

1988),

pp.

1203-1230.

I

think the

argument

by

Samuel

P.

Huntingdon,

The

clash

of

civilizations,

Foreign Affairs

(Summer

1993),

pp.

22-49,

is

wrong

in

many

of its

implications,

but the assertion

that cultural

differences are

becoming

more

obviously

politically

relevant

seems

on the mark.

5.

Gabriel Almond

and G.

Bingham

Powell,

Comparative

Politics:

System,

Process,

Policy

(Boston:

Little,

Brown,

1978),

p.

25. The

definition

seems not

very

well

thought

through.

Is

culture

simply

a set of

attitudes,

or is it

a

system

of

attitudes

(and

other

things)?

Is

every political system

a

nation,

or

is

the

concept

relevant

only

to those which

are? Shouldn't

culture be

continuous over

time,

and not

identified

necessarily

with

opinions

which

prevail

at one

given

time?

6.

Gabriel Almond

and

Sidney

Verba,

The Civic

Culture:

Political Attitudes and

Democracy inFive Nations (Princeton:PrincetonUniversity Press, 1963). Forlater reflections

on the

methodology

and debates on

the

concept's

adequacy

as

political theory,

see Gabriel

?

The

China

Quarterly,

1994


3/11

732

The China

Quarterly

the

underlying

bases

of

stable

democracy.

The

authors infer culture

from

answers to

a

poll,

with

the

responses interpreted

as

displaying

attitudes

rather than giving information. The Civic Culture and the tradition it

belongs

to form

part

of the

tradition-modernization

paradigm.

Traditional

society

nourishes authoritarian

personalities,7

while

modernity

is more or

less identified

with

middle-to-late

20th-century

Western secular

liberal-

ism.8

The

rational,

secular

civic

culture

(the

pattern

identified,

more or

less,

in

England

and

America

in the

late

1950s)

supposedly

bolsters

democratic

institutions;

other cultural

configurations,

supposedly,

do

not.

Opinions

about

politics,

then,

become

expressions

of

personality.

It

may

be more

useful,

and not much less

parsimonious,

to take

a

broader

view. In

anthropology,

culture sometimes

seems to refer

to all the

non-biological aspects

of human

life,

whether material or mental.

In

this

sense

politics

and

political

institutions

are

part

of

culture,

and

perhaps

could

be

profitably

studied as such.

We

might

show

how

politics

is

conditioned

by

the

larger

cultural

context,

as

well as how

politics might

work to

preserve

or

change

the

larger

culture.

Attitudes toward

politics

would be considered

not

necessarily

as

projections

of

individual

psy-

chology,

but

as rational constructs

to

be understood

in terms

of the

worldviews currentin the society.

Research on culture

is

sometimes

taken as

an

alternative

to

studies of

institutions,

or

to a

focus on social

structures

and

processes,

or to

the

recently

fashionable

rational

choice

approach.

I

think, rather,

that

it

complements

other

possible

ways

to

study politics:

sometimes

it

may

generate particular empirical hypotheses (particularly

when

comparisons

are

being

made across

different cultures

or

in

the

same culture

at

different

times),

but,

by

and

large,

the cultural

approach

does

not

point

to a

theory

of

politics.

It

provides

the

context

for

different

theories.

In the contem-

poraryworld, at any rate, there is no necessary direct connection between

a state's

formal institutional

structure

and the culture

of the

society

it

rules.

The

way

in which formal

institutions

work

will

be

conditioned

by

the

culture, and,

if

the

institutions

are

effective,

will also

shape

its

evolution.

In

the

more

generous anthropological

sense of

culture,

social

structure

(such

as

the

number

of social

classes

and the

relations

among

them)

is

itself

a cultural

trait.

Similarly,

there

may

be

no such

thing

as

rationality

in the abstract

there

is

certainly

no universal

abstract

ration-

ality

of

ends,

since

people

can

be demonstrated

to value

different

things.

Rational choice means acting according to the logic of the situation,9and

footnote

continued

Almond and

Sidney

Verba

(eds.),

The

Civic

Culture

Revisited

(Boston:

Little,

Brown,

1988).

For

a recent

empirical

study

of

political change

using

the

concept

of

political study,

see

Robert

Putnam,

Making

Democracy

Work:

Civic

Traditions

in Modern

Italy

(Princeton:

Princeton

University

Press,

1993).

7. Theodore

Adorno,

The

Authoritarian

Personality

(New

York:

Harper,

1950).

8. David

Horton

Smith,

Alex

Inkles,

The

OM scale:

a

comparative socio-psychological

individual

modernity,

Sociometry,

Vol.

29,

No.

4

(December

1966),

pp.

353-377.

9. Karl

R.

Popper,

The

Poverty of

Historicism

(Boston:

Beacon

Press,

1957),

p.

147.

The

best known (and most entertaining) systematic applicationof the concept to political science

is

probablyAnthony

Downs,

An Economic

Theory

of Democracy

(New

York:

Harper,

1957).


4/11

The

Study

of

Chinese

Political Culture

culture

helps

define what the situation is. Differences

go beyond

different

values

or

ends,

extending

to modes

of

reasoning

and

perceptions

of

the

world.'? A focus on culture is thus not a substitute for other kinds of

theorizing,

but

puts

them

in

perspective

and

delineates

their realm

of

applicability.

Chinese

Political Culture

This

mainstream

approach

has been elaborated

in

China studies

by

Lucian

Pye

and Richard Solomon. Unlike the authors of The

Civic

Culture

they

do not

survey public opinion'2

(although

Solomon

adminis-

tered a Thematic ApperceptionTest), but abstract culturalgeneralizations

from Chinese

history,

literatureand

contemporarypolitics. They

share the


paradigm

and the

assumption

that

culture is a

sum of individual attributes.

So,

Chinese

combine

a

dependent craving

for

authority

with a

sense

that

authority

is

arbitrary

and must

constantly

be

placated; they

build

up

resentments which

they

fear to

express.

Chinese

judge authority

in

moral terms.

They

identify

morality

with

harmony,

so

politics,

the

open

conflict of interest

and

opinion,

is inher-

ently

immoral

as well

as

socially

disruptive.

Conflict is

in

fact as

inevitable in Chinese life as it is

anywhere

else in this vale of

tears,

but

lacking

cultural

legitimacy,

its

expression

becomes

pathological. Pye

identifies

certain antinomies

in

Chinese culture

-

Confucianism and Dao-

ism

in

former

times,

the

Maoist and

Dengist

approaches today.'3

These

contradictions

presumably

mean

that behaviour

cannot be

predicted

di-

rectly

from

culture

(since

anything

that

happens

will

be consistent with

some

element of

culture),

but the contradictions

define the cultural

style

and

its

range

of

probable

reactions.

Although

China

allegedly

lacks

a modern

culture,

the

country

is not

totally

without

hope.

Solomon,

sporting

an

uncharacteristic

Maoism,

speculated

that the Cultural

Revolution,

by

making

conflict

( struggle )

a

footnote

continued

For

examples

of recent

influential studies of

democratization which take a rational choice

approach

and

which

basicially ignore

considerations of

culture,

civic

or

otherwise,

see

Guillermo

O'Donnell,

Philippe

C.

Schmitter and

Laurence Whitehead

(eds.),

Transitionsfrom

Authoritarian

Rule:

Comparative Perspectives

(Baltimore:

The Johns

Hopkins University

Press,

1986).

For a

rational choice

interpretation

of

Chinese

politics partly

critical

of

a central

emphasis

on

culture,

see

Avery

Goldstein,

From

Bandwagon

to

Balance-of-Power

Politics:

Structural

Constraints

and

Politics in

China,

1949-1978

(Stanford:

Stanford

University

Press, 1991).

10.

Compare

Aaron

Wildavsky,

Choosing preferences by constructing

institutions: a

cultural

theory

of

preference

formation,

American

Political Science

Review,

Vol.

81,

No.

I

(March

1987),

pp.

3-23.

11. Lucian

Pye,

The

Spirit of

Chinese Politics: A

Psychological

Study of

the

Authority

Crisis

in

Political

Development

(Boston:

MIT

Press,

1968);

The

Dynamics

of

Chinese Politics

(Cambridge,

MA:

Oelgeschlager,

Gunn

&

Hain,

1981);

Richard

Solomon,

Mao's Revolution

and the

Chinese

Political Culture

(Berkeley:

University

of

California

Press,

1971).

12.

See, however,

Andrew Nathan

and Tianjian

Shi,

Cultural

requisites

for

democracy

in China:

findings

from a

survey,

Daedalus,

No. 122

(Spring

1992),

pp.

95-124. This

is also

discussed

below.

13.

Lucian

Pye,

The

Mandarinand the

Cadre: China's

Political

Cultures

Ann

Arbor:Center

for Chinese Studies, 1988); somethinglike this themeis pursuedwith intimidatingeruditionby

Wolfgang

Bauer,

China

and

the

Search

for

Happiness

(New

York:

Seabury,

1976).

733


5/11

734

The

China

Quarterly

legitimate

part

of the

political process,

might

shake the Chinese

people

from their

authoritarian

ethargy.'4 Pye

allows for the

possibility

that with

the reformmovement the Chinese are

finally

shedding

mystification

and

joining

the

community

of

enlightened

and

rational

people. 15

The

Dynamics of

Chinese Politics was

considered as

heralding

a

third

generation

of

China

scholarship.'6

As one of

the first

major syntheses

following

the

purge

of the

Gang

of

Four,

it was

a

perceptive guide

to

what

really

counted

in

the

play

of Chinese

politics,

refreshingly

clear-

headed

compared

with

some earlier Western

sentimental

misinterpreta-

tions,

which seemed

to assume that

making

revolution was indeed a

dinner

party

or

sewing

an

embroidery,

or

something

equally

refined.

Yet its

generalizations

are

uncomfortably

close to

what has been called

the

Shanghai

mind,

the Western

folklore about Chinese culture chroni-

cled,

for

example, by

Harold

Isaacs'7

that

might

pretentiously

be called

the Western

discourse

on

China.'8

The

stereotypes

do,

of

course,

have

a

certain

objective

foundation.

They

are shared

by

numbers

of dissident

Chinese intellectuals in the

post-Mao

period.

The Chinese

government,

if

it comes to

that,

is

sometimes

pleased

to affect the same kind

of

views to

show it

should not be

expected

to cater

to

outsiders' notions

of

human

rights, which are, after all, contingent on culture and

circumstance,19

though

this

may

be a

point

of view more

persuasive

to rulers than to

victims of rule. It is still ironic

that the

cultural

approach

can lead to

ethnocentrism: the

commonplaces

of the late

20th-century

West become

the human

norm,

with

deviations dismissed as

irrational,

to

be

explained

in

psychological

rather than intellectual terms.

Cultural

analysis

of this

type

is more

persuasive

when

cast more

in

terms of rational

choice and

less in terms of

personal psychology.20

The

14. Solomon, Mao's Revolution, p. 520. A possible objection is that Chairman Mao

neglected

to

legitimate fighting

back. To be

fair,

however,

a case can

certainly

be made that

Cultural Revolution-era Rebel

ideology

evolved

into an

influence

on

the democratic ferment

of

the

1980s.

Anita

Chan,

Dispelling misconceptions

about the Red Guard

Movement,

The

Journal

of

Contemporary

China,

Vol.

1,

No.

1

(Fall

1992),

pp.

61-85. For

objections

to

Solomon's

methods and

findings

from more traditional China

scholars,

see

F.

W.

Mote,

China's

past

and

the

study

of China

today:

some comments on the recent work

of

Richard

Solomon,

Journal

of

Asian

Studies,

Vol.

32,

No.

1

(November

1972),

pp.

107-120;

also

Thomas A.

Metzger,

On

Chinese

political

culture,

Journal

of

Asian

Studies,

Vol.

32,

No.

1

(November

1972),

pp.

101-105.

15.

Pye,

The Mandarin

and the

Cadre,

p.

75.

16.

Harry Harding,

The

study

of Chinese

politics:

toward

a third

generation

of

scholarship, WorldPolitics, Vol. 36, No. 2 (January1984), pp. 284-307.

17.

Harold

Isaacs,

Scratches

on Our Mind

(Boston:

MIT

Press,

1958).

18.

Compare

Edward

Said,

Orientalism

(New

York:

Pantheon,

1978).

19. Renmin ribao

(overseas edition),

18

June 1993. The

point,

of

course,

is not

entirely

invalid. There is

a

political

tendency

to chatter

too

glibly

about human

rights,

without serious

consideration of what constitutes a

right

and what it means

to be

human

-

grave, perhaps

even

sophomoric, philosophic

issues,

but relevant

to

any policy

which

would have

human

rights

as

a

component.

A

more

accurate

appreciation

of the

workings

of

culture

might

not solve the

philosophical

issue,

but would be relevant

to

practical policy.

20.

Pye's

dissertation,

Warlord

Politics:

Conflict

and

Coalition

in

the

Modernization

of

Republican

China

(New

York:

Praeger,

1971)

interprets

Chinese

politics

in

the same

way

as

his later work

(with

an

emphasis

on

the

logic

of

the

power struggle),

but

is

founded on rational

choice assumptions, without much psychologizing. More recently, Lucian Pye, China:

erratic

state,

frustrated

society,

Foreign Affairs

(Fall 1990),

pp.

56-74,

shows how culture


6/11

The

Study

of

Chinese

Political

Culture

Dynamics

of

Chinese

Politics makes much of the

role of

guanxi,

personal

connections,

taking

it

as evidence of

a Chinese,

propensity

to find

security

in small groups. The pioneering work on this concept by Bruce Jacobs

demonstratedthat

guanxi

structures

relationships

in the

Taiwanese

village

he

examined

(and,

by

hypothesis,

in

large

areas of

Chinese

life

gener-

ally).21

Guanxi forms

the

context

in

which

people

must

operate.

The

locals

may

well have a

psychological

need for

support

from

the

group,

but

whether

they

do

or

not,

to

succeed

in

day-to-day

life

they

need

to

know how

to use

connections. There is

a cultural

pattern

here,

but

its

manifestation

depends upon

circumstances.

Andrew

Walder

has

demonstrated

how,

at

least

until the

mid-1980s,

the Leninist economic

organization

gave

enormous

power

to

the

work

unit

over the life of

the

individual and

also

tremendous

power

to

those

in

authority

in

the work

unit.

The

consequence

was a

need

to

cultivate

good

personal

relations with those in

power,

leading

to a

principled

particular-

ism,

an

integration

of

patrimonial

rule

with

modem

bureaucratic

forms. 22The

institutional

structure

by

itself

could

explain

both the

role

of

particularistic

relationships

and a

dependent

mentality by

the under-

lings

in

an

organization.

There

is

a

possible

problem

of

overdetermination, ince while Walder's analysis is consistent with the

conventional

view of

Chinese

culture,

his

theory

derives more from

comparison

with

other

post-totalitarian

Leninist

systems.

A

possible

hypothesis

is

that

Chinese

culture

and

Leninist

organization,

especially

in

its

less

virulently

totalitarian

phases,

are

mutually

reinforcing.

Any

Chinese

ability

and

propensity

to form

particularistic

groups

for

mutual

advantage

independently

of

the formal

institutional

structure

may explain

the

greater

success of

Chinese

reform over

that in

the

Soviet

Union,

at

least if

such

groups

are

useful for

engaging

in

business. In

the

Soviet

Union, unlike China, the collapse of the collective economy seems to

have

virtually

meant

general

economic

collapse.

On

an

even more

abstract

level,

the

structure of

society

and the

relationship

of

society

to the

state are

a

part

of

culture. One

conventional

view

has been

that

in

China

and East

Asia

generally,

the

social

order is

an

artifact

or

reflection

of the

political

order,

and

this

helps

explain

both

the

particularism

and

moralism

of the

political

style

in

these

societies.23

Other

analyses

postulate

more

autonomy

for

the

society.

One

trend

even

finds

civil

society,

that old

but

now

ubiquitously

fashionable

formation,

not merely in China today but even in Qing and Republican times.24But

footnote

continued

helps

shape

Chinese social

structure

and

state-society

relationships,

without

reference

to

individual

psychological

traits.

21.

J. Bruce

Jacobs,

A

preliminary

model

of

particularistic

ties

in

Chinese

political

alliances,

The

China

Quarterly,

No.

78

(June

1979),

pp.

237-273.

22.

Andrew

G.

Walder,

Communist

Neo-Traditionalism: Work

and

Authority

in

Chinese

Industry

(Berkeley:

University

of

California

Press,

1986),

pp.

187,

251.

23.

Peter R.

Moody,

Jr.,

Political

Opposition

in

Post-Confucian

Society

(New

York:

Praeger,

1988).

Pye,

China:

erratic

state,

frustrated

society

takes a

somewhat

similar

line.

24. William T. Rowe, Hankow: Commerce and Society in a Chinese City, 1796-1889

(Stanford:

Stanford

University

Press,

1984);

Hankow:

Conflict

and

Community

n a

Chinese

735


7/11

736

The

China

Quarterly

if

China did

have a civil

society,

the

consequences

were

not the same as

in

Europe.

Other

writers find there

was no

force

in

Chinese

society

pushing for radical

change.25

It is difficult to be

overly

confident about

any general

assertions

about

Chinese

society, except

that its

analysis,

whatever use it

may

make

of

general

theories,

must

continue to consider

what

Prasenjit

Duara calls the

cultural nexus of

power.26

Cultural

Politics

Culture includes

ideas

as well as

social

structures. The nature of

the

traditional culture and its problematiccompatibility with modernityhave

been

guiding

themes

in

Chinese

politics

for

more than a

century.

An

academic focus on

the theme

is

relevant both

for the

general problem

of

tradition

and

modernity

and for the

substance of Chinese

politics

itself.

The

ideas should be treated as rational

constructs,

not as mental

quirks.

Here the work of

Joseph

Levenson,

perhaps

now somewhat

dated,

remains

exemplary.27

To

oversimplify,

Confucian

China could not

mod-

ernize,

since

Confucianism defined a structureof

power

and

privilege

and

also

defined the moral universe of

those

with

power

and

privilege;

and

Confucianism was

rationally

and

politically incompatible

with the

changes required

for

modernization.28

By

the

same

reasoning,

the mod-

ernization

of

China meant the end of Confucianism. To use

(or

parody)

a

Levensonian

locution,

moder

China

grew

out of traditional

China,

but

also

grew

out of

it;

understanding

Chinese

politics requires

an

investiga-

tion of cultural

change.

This

approach

addresses structures

of

ideas

and

institutions,

which define

structures of

interest

and action.

Levenson

finished

his

major

work on

the

eve

of the

Cultural

Revol-

ution,

and took the Communist

regime

as

the

epitome

of Chinese

modernity.

That

regime's

easy

appropriation

of the Great Tradition

in the

early

1960s served as evidence that tradition

no

longer

had

any

relevance

to

ordinary

life,

and

so was no

longer

a subversive

political

threat

(just

as

the Vatican museum

can

display

statues

of

Apollo).29

But in the Cultural

Revolution the tradition

was attacked

again: perhaps

it was not as dead as

it seemed.

It

continued

to feature

in

polemics

in the 1970s and 1980s.

footnote

continued

City,

1796-1895

(Stanford:

Stanford

University

Press,

1989).

Modern

China,

Vol.

19,

No.

2 (April 1993) is devoted to the question of civil society. For the contemporaryperiod, see

Barrett

L.

McCormick,

Su Shaozhi and

Xiao

Xiaoming,

The 1989

Democracy

Movement:

a review of the

prospects

for civil

society

in

China,

Pacific

Affairs,

Vol.

65,

No.

2

(Summer

1992),

pp.

182-202.

25. Mark

Elvin,

The Pattern

of

the Chinese Past

(Stanford:

Stanford

University

Press,

1973);

Ray Huang,

1587,

A

Year

of

No

Significance:

The

Ming

Dynasty

in Decline

(New

Haven:

Yale

University

Press,

1981).

26.

Prasenjit

Duara,

Culture,

Power,

and the State:

Rural

North

China,

1900-1942

(Stanford:

Stanford

University

Press,

1988).

27.

Joseph

R.

Levenson,

Confucian

China

and Its Modem

Fate:

A

Trilogy

(Berkeley:

University

of

California

Press,

1967).

28. The earlier

statement

of this theme

is Max

Weber,

The

Religion of

China;

Confucianism and Taoism (New York: Free Press, 1951).

29.

Levenson,

Confucian

China,

Vol.

3,

pp.

78-82.


8/11

The

Study

of Chinese

Political

Culture

Although

Levenson

explicitly

refrains

from

saying

so,

his

historicism

implies

that Confucianism

(or

any

other

system

of

thought)

has no

meaning

outside its

particular

cultural context. Like most of China

studies,

work

on

Chinese

philosophy

does

in

fact remain

somewhat

marginalized,

but it has

been the

subject

of

increasing

creative work

both

in China and the

West,

and it seems

to

keep philosophical

as well as

historical

or

ethnographic

interest.30

t is no

longer

readily

assumed that

Confucianism

(admittedly

rather

broadly

construed)

is

incompatible

with

modernization,31

although

whether

Confucian

society

can modernize

while under

the

sway

of the central

Chinese state

remains an

open

question.

Where

Pye

sees

continuity,

Levenson

finds

an absolute break.

Both,

however,

operate

within the tradition-modernization

paradigm,

which

assumes that the

two

conditions,

taken

as ideal

types,

are

mutually

exclusive.

Those

who

have used

the

concept

have

always

maintained,

of

course,

that actual societies are

always

mixtures of traditional and moder

elements.32

But,

to belabour

the chemical

analogy,

societies

may

be

compounds

rather than

mixtures,

and

unstable

compounds

at that

(imply-

ing

that neither tradition nor

modernity

need

be

seen as

simply something

that dilutes the other, and that they may interact in ways not obviously

predictable

from the

traits

of

either

in

isolation).

The abstract

juxtapo-

sition of an ideal tradition and an ideal

modernity

may

miss

what is most

culturally

significant

about the social

or

political actuality.

This school

also tends to trace

the force

for

change

in China

not to

tendencies

inherent in the older

system

but to the

impact

of the West.33

Continuity

need

not mean

that China

today

is the same

as traditional

China,

but

could

imply rejecting

a

sharp dichotomy

between the traditionaland the

modern.34Traditional

official Confucianism was

probably

not

as

blandly

free of inner tensions as Max Weber would have it, and modernization

may

have

helped

resolve some of those tensions.35

Students

of literature

trace

themes

normally thought

to date

from the

May

Fourth

period

back

at

least to

the

early Qing.36

30.

See,

for

example, Benjamin

I.

Schwartz,

The

World

of Thought

in Ancient China

(Cambridge,

MA:

Harvard

University

Press,

1985).

31.

Gilbert

Rozman

(ed.),

The East Asian

Region:

Confucian Heritage

and

Its

Modem

Applications

(Princeton:

Princeton

University

Press,

1991).

32. This

point

is

made,

for

example, by

both editors and

by

all

contributors to Lucian

W.

Pye and Sidney Verba (eds.), Political Culture and Political Development (Princeton;

Princeton

University

Press,

1965).

33.

In American

scholarship,

the first tomake

effigies

here was John K.

Fairbank,

although

Levenson

developed

the

more

profound

argument.

For a

critique

see Paul

A.

Cohen,

Discovering History

in

China: American Historical

Writing

on the Recent Chinese Past

(New

York:

Columbia

University

Press,

1984).

34.

Lloyd

I.

Rudolph,

Susan H.

Rudolph,

The

Modernity of

Tradition: Political

Development

in India

(Chicago:

University

of

Chicago

Press, 1967).

35. Thomas A.

Metzger,

Escape from

Predicament:

Neo-Confucianism

and

China's

Evolving

Historical Culture

(New

York: Columbia

University

Press,

1967).

36.

Jaroslav

Prusek,

Chinese

History

and Literature

(Dordrecht:

Reidel,

1970);

Paul

S.

Ropp,

Dissent in

Early

Modem

China:

Ju-lin

Wai-shih and Ch

ing

Social Criticism

(Ann

Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1981); Robert E. Hegel, The Novel in Seventeenth

Century

China

(New

York:

Columbia

University

Press,

1981).

737


9/11

738

The

China

Quarterly

Even

if

the


paradigm

poses

a false

dichotomy,

if

used

prudently

it

is

a

fallacy

with considerable

heuristic value.

The

paradigmremains alive, and so worth

investigating,

as a

major compo-

nent of

Chinese

politics.

The

May

Fourth

discourse,

with

liberals attribut-

ing

China's ills

to a dark

tradition too

powerful

to die and

conservatives

treating

liberalism as

a

foreign

slave's

rejection

of

civilization,

country

and

good

morals,

has itself become an

enduring

theme of

contemporary

Chinese

political

culture.

Liberal

polemicists

attack the Communist

regime

in

terms

previously

used

against

the

warlords and the

KMT,

with

constructs of

traditional culture

replicating

the vision of it in

Western

political

science,

oriental

despotism

coupled

with

psychological

kinks.37

The

relationship

between

the old culture and modern

democracy

is a

topic

among

serious

Chinese

scholars as

well,

with

the

socialist

system

seen as

a kind of

adaptation, perhaps

an

inferior

one,

of the traditional order.38At

present

the

approach

to culture

through political thought

perhaps appeals

more to

Chinese

activists and scholars than to

outsiders,

possible

evi-

dence

of

its relevance to an

understanding

of what

is

significant

in

Chinese

politics.

Part of

the

job

of cultural

analysis

is

to

reconstruct

(or deconstruct?)

the

assumptions about the world currentin a society. These assumptions

are

(trivially) likely

to be

articulated

by

the

articulate,

which

may give

the

analysis

an elitist

tinge.

But

popular

culture remains

important

for

the

study

of

Chinese

politics,

both

for

its

possible

influence

on

politics,

democratic or

not,

and as a

perennial object

of

political

concern. Whether

or not

there

is a difference between elite and

popular

visions is itself

a

cultural attribute.

A

distinction,

often

probably

exaggerated,

between

the

great

tradition and the little tradition is a

commonplace

of China studies.

In

political

terms,

the

gap

between

ordinary

and educated

people

may

be

greater now than in the past: the proletarian world view was held, it

would

seem,

only

within

fairly

narrow circles

of

activists.

In the reform

period

intellectuals

uttering

democratic

principles

were

not

always quick

to connect

them

to the lives of workers or

peasants

who

might

benefit

from their

implementation.

Andrew Nathan and Shi

Tianjian

have made an

interesting

attempt

to

apply

the Civic Culture

methodology

to

China,

generalizing

from a

survey

conducted

in late

1990.39

This

approach

suggests

certain

questions

about the Civic Culture

assumptions

and

interpretation

of

the

findings.

They find an anomaly: in China, unlike in other countries, those with a

higher degree

of education

feel

less sure of fair

treatment

by

the author-

ities than do the less well-educated.

Is

this

a Chinese cultural

trait

or a

reflection

of

an

objectively

valid

perception

of conditions

following

4

June?

They

find

another

paradox:

people generally

see

the

government

as

37. For

examples,

see Geremie Barme

and

John

Minford

(eds.),

Seeds

of

Fire: Chinese

Voices

of

Conscience

(New

York:

Hill

&

Wang,

1968).

38. For

example,

Guantao

Jin,

Socialism and tradition: the

formation and

development

of modem Chinese

political

culture,

Journal

of Contemporary

China,

No.

3

(Summer

1993),

pp. 3-17.

39. Nathan

and

Shi,

Cultural

requisites

for

democracy.


10/11

The

Study

of Chinese Political

Culture

having

little

effect on

their

lives,

pointing

to a

gap

between the

objective

role of an

intrusive Communist state and the

subjective perceptions

of

ordinary

citizens. 40But does

ordinary

Chinese

usage

consider the work

units

analysed by

Andrew Walder and others

to be

part

of the state

or

government?

Or,

perhaps,

those

surveyed

were

comparing

the

situation

in

1990 with that

prior

to the reform

period,

so that however

intrusive

politics may

be,

it

is

not as intrusive as

it

was.

Or,

perhaps,

the

answers

reflect

the

tacit

bargain

struck between

regime

and

population

around

1990,

whereby

the

people

would

keep

away

from

politics

and,

in

return,

the

regime

would

more or less

allow

society

to

go

its own

way.

Or,

conceivably,

the

question

was framed

in a

way

so that those

asking

it

and

those

answering

it did not understandthe same

thing by

it.

Nathan and Shi conclude

that

should there be another

political

crisis,

the

general

population

will

probably

not

offer much active

backing

for

demands for

political change.41

But

if

their results reflect

underlying

culture

(as

they

certainly

may)

rather than the conditions of

the

moment,

one

is

hard-put

to understand

the

very

evident

active

support

for

demo-

cratic

change

shown

by

the

urban

population

in

1989.

Opinion

surveys

are

always

useful

and

interesting,

but must be considered within the

context

of

more

interpretative analyses

of culture.42

Pedantic

objections

aside,

it must be

admitted that

the

survey

findings

corroborate the

picture

of an

apolitical,

even

antipolitical, atmosphere

in

the

China of the

early

1990s

described

in

interpretative

studies of

the

period.

These and

other

surveys

also show

differences

in

opinion

and

even cultural

orientation between

intellectuals and

ordinary people,

even

when both

groups

are alienated from the

existing

order.43

Foreign

com-

mentary

may over-emphasize

the

Western-influenced,

nihilistic and ex-

plicitly

dissident elements of

popular

culture.44The

hooligan

stories of

Wang

Shuo

no doubt appeal to certain states of mind,45but so do the

well-presented

platitudes,

as

palatable

to rulers

as

to the

ruled,

of

his

soap-opera

mini-series

Yearning.46

China

may

be

reverting

to its

cultural

norm,

with

distinct but

overlap-

ping

official and

popular

cultures,

informed

by

a

common

spirit

and

coexisting

in

an

uneasy

fashion,

and with elements of

the

popular

culture

40.

Ibid.

p.

104.

41.

Ibid.

p.

116.

42.

Andrew

Nathan,

Is

Chinese

culture distinctive: a review

article,

The Journal

ofAsian

Studies,Vol. 52, No. 4 (November 1993), pp. 923-936, makes the converse of this argument.

43.

Compare

Peter R.

Moody,

Jr.,

The

political

culture

of Chinese

students and

intellectuals: a historical

examination,

Asian

Survey,

Vol.

28,

No. 11

(November

1988),

pp.

1140-1160. Zhu

Jianhua,

From

discontent to

sympathy

with

the student

movement? An

empirical

study

of

urban workers

on the eve of

the 1989

democracy

movement,

Dangdai

Zhongguo Yanjiu

Zhongxin

Lunwen,

Vol.

3,

No. 8

(August

1992)

analyses

survey

data

indicating

that

workers most

sympathetic

with the

1989

democracy

movement were also

those

most

unhappy

with the

economic

reforms.

44.

Geremie

Barme and Linda Jaivin

(eds.),

New

Ghosts,

Old Dreams:

Chinese Rebel

Voices

(New

York:

Times

Books,

1992).

45.

Geremie

Barme,

Wang

Shuo and

Liumang

('Hooligan')

culture,

Australian Journal

of

Chinese

Affairs,

No.

28

(July

1992),

pp.

23-64.

46. See the interestingoverview of popularcultureby Liu Xiaobo, Towardvulgarity and

soullessness,

Zhongguo

zhi

Chun,

May

1993,

pp.

28-34.

739


11/11

740 The

China

Quarterly

abstractly

subversive to the

official order but not

really threatening

t. The

authorities

retain their

self-designated positions

as

cultural

arbiters,

albeit

tolerant ones unless the structure of

power

is

endangered.

A difference

from earlier times is a

lack of

moral

centre,

so that

official

interventions

may

seem to be

arbitrary

and

self-serving,

and

there

will

be no sense in

the inherent

rightness

of the order should it

some

day

come under

effective

challenge.

Political

Culture

This

brief overview can

only

suggest

lines of

argument

and

raise

questions

for

discussion

without

developing

them,

and leaves much that

needs

to be

expanded,

clarified,

qualified

and

probably

even

repudiated.

The root

banality

is

that Chinese

politics

cannot

be

understood

separately

from culture. Culture

provides

the

setting

for

politics.

In

China

particu-

larly,

cultural

change

and

continuity

are substantive themes of

politics

and

perennial

topics

of

political

debate.

Explicit

use of

political

culture

in

mainstream

American

political

science studies of China has

largely kept

to

the

psychocultural approach

to

modernization

defining

the

concept

as

a sort

of

sum of

the

individual attitudes

about

politics

held

by

members

of

a

society.

The

approach

raises

logical,

theoretical and

empirical

questions

which

should

probably

be discussed

more

explicitly

than

they

have

been.

I have the

impression

that while this

scholarship

is

certainly

used

for

its

insights,

it

remains

peripheral

to

analyses

using

other

approaches.

A

broader,

more traditional

concept

of

culture

may

allow a

more

systematic incorporation

of culture into

political analysis.

I

think culture is most

usefully

understood as an

impersonal

structure

or patternof relationships among actions, ideas and interactions.A focus

on

ideas

or

attitudes

is too narrow

(and

gains nothing

by using

culture as

a

synonym

for

attitudes).

Political cultural

analysis

should

also en-

compass

institutions and

customary

ways

of

acting.

When ideas are

incorporated

into

the

analysis,

as

they certainly

must

be,

there should be

an

attempt

to show their

logic

or

rationale,

not

simply present

them as a

list or set

of

opinions

or

values.

Cultural

analysis

may

sometimes

generate

specific

hypotheses.

Refer-

ences to

political

culture are not

a substitute

for

substantive

empirical

research. Nor are cultural generalizations a substitute for institutional or

other kinds of

political

analysis.

Culture

refers,

perhaps,

to

the context

in

which the various

political,

economic

and social forces

operate.

To be

complete, any

particular

theoretical

approach

must take

culture

into

account,

as culture

provides

the

parameters

of the

theory,

an indication

of

the

range

and

scope

within which it

might

be valid

and the

ways

in

which,

if

it

is

valid,

it

might

show itself.

Conversely,

institutions,

social

relations

or historical events

condition

the

ways

in which

culture

mani-

fests

itself.

Documents

Trends in the Study of Chinese Political Culture