Nation and State in Chinese Antiquity.

The Confucian system, against which Sun Yat-sen reacted in part and in part sought to preserve, was a set of ideas and institutions developed as a reaction against certain conditions in ancient China. These conditions may be roughly described as having arisen from a system of proto-nationalisms, at a time when the old—perhaps prehistorically ancient—Chinese feudal system was rapidly declining and an early form of capitalism and of states was taking its place. The Chou dynasty (ca. 1150-221 B.C.) was in power at the time of this transition; under its rule the golden age of Chinese philosophy appeared—Confucius (552-479 B.C.) and Lao Tzŭ (ca. 570-ca. 490 B.C.) lived and taught.

Their philosophies, contrary to the popular Western beliefs concerning Chinese philosophies, were protests against a world which seemed to them well-nigh intolerable. The old Chinese system, which may seem to Westerners a highly mystical feudal organization, was in its century-long death-agonies; the virtues it had taught were not the virtues of the hour; the loyalties it had set up were loyalties which could scarcely be maintained in a time when rising states, acting more and more as states have acted in the West, were disrupting the earlier organization [pg 026] of society, waging struggles—in the manner that, centuries later, Machiavelli was to portray—of intrigue and warfare for the eventual hegemony over that whole area of eastern Asia which the Chinese of that time regarded as the civilized world.

The political aspects of the transition from the feudal to the proto-national system is described by one of the most eminent of the Western authorities on China in the following terms: “The aim of all the Leaders was to control western Ho-nan. There is the heart of ancient China.... All around about, in vaster regions occupied no doubt by less dense and more shifting populations, great States formed, increasing first towards the exterior, seeking (as we have seen in the case of China) to cut the communication of their rivals with the Barbarians, mutually forcing each other to change the directions of the expansion, exercising on each other a pressure from behind, and a converging pressure on the central overlordships. All schemed to conquer them. Thus an amalgamation was achieved. Whilst in the centre the Chinese nation was coming into being, on the outer borders States were being formed which, aiming at annexing the centre of China, ended by themselves also becoming Chinese.”26 Not only did the newer, political organization of society begin to make itself distinct from the family, feudal, and religious organization; it began to engage in activities which increased its resemblance to the Western system of nations. Tributes of textiles, horses, and compulsory labor were demanded. A non-feudal economy was encouraged; [pg 027] the state of Ch'i encouraged artisans and merchants, and favored the trade in fish and salt. Mining, metallurgy and currency were studied. State monopolies were created out of the products of forests, lakes, marshes, shell-fish beds, and salt pans. Mines also became “treasures of the state.”27

The history of these states reads like a page torn out of the history of early modern Europe. The struggle was half diplomatic and half military. From the beginning of the Spring and Autumn period (722-481 B.C.) to the end of the Age of Warring States (491-221 B.C.), China was subject to frequent war and unstable peace. The character of war itself changed, from a chivalrous exercise almost ritualistic in nature, to a struggle of unrestricted force. The units of government which were to develop into states, and almost into nations, began as feudal overlordships; traditional hatreds and sentiments were developed; diplomatic and military policies crystallized and became consistent; and activities of a state nature became increasingly prominent.

Concurrently, other factors operated to prevent an indefinite continuance of these struggles of proto-national states and to avoid the appearance of a permanent system of armed nations such as that which has appeared in modern Europe. The feudal system of China left a strong ethnical, linguistic and intellectual heritage of unity, which was stronger than the cultural disunities and particularities appearing in certain of the states. (The state of Chêng was particularly conspicuous in developing a peculiar state culture.)28 As the states became larger and larger with the passing of time, they tended not only to develop certain large differences between themselves, but to eradicate the minute local peculiarities of the old [pg 028] system, and in so doing to increase the general homogeneity which was also a heritage of the past ages. This general homogeneity found a living symbol in the persons of the Chou Emperors who, possessed of no more power than the Tennos under the Shogunate, acted, as did their Japanese analogues two thousand years later, as the quasi-religious personifications of the whole general community. It thus occurred that the old feudal system was destroyed by the growth of a general non-feudal economy and political order, which, in its turn, led to the development of the great imperial system under which China continued for many centuries. The period of the transition, during which the traditional feudal unity had been shaken and the new imperial unity not yet established, was a tumultuous and bloody one. The presence of a confederation under the hegemony of some one state—the so-called Presidency—provided a suitable framework for rivalries toward power, without particularly increasing the general peace.

The transition, as it took place, was neither apparent nor agreeable. The political turmoil was but slightly less than the intellectual unrest and disturbance. Everywhere faith and acceptance seemed to have been lost to humanity; licentiousness and impiety fed discord. The lack of harmony, made doubly vivid by the presence of a strong tradition of primeval Arcadian peace and unity under the mythological Emperors, was bitter to the scholars and men of virtue of the time. It was quite inevitable that protests should be raised which would hasten the advent, or return, of unity and peace. These protests form the subject of the work of Confucius and the other great philosophers, and schools of thinkers, of the Chou dynasty. It was, in later ages, upon these philosophies that the great structure of Chinese society developed and continued down until modern times.

[pg 029]