the chinese empire and its legacy in the present

How has history influenced the Chinese present? To journalist Ross Terrill who has long worked in China, the long Chinese empire (220 B.C.) to 1911, has left a lasting legacy in the form of authoritarian rule. He quoted the oft used phrase "The king is dead, long live the king" during royalty successions in England to indicate that even though a particular king may be deceased or the system of imperial rule declared an end, authoritarian rule as a system of practice continues. The strength of this chapter is Terrill's dexterous use of history and weaving of history and the present, which provides a readable and concise overview of Chinese history. I will single out a few points from this chapter and discuss them briefly below.

1. A China centered world in history:

The early development of Chinese civilization (5,000 years of history) that seemed to tower above its neighbors and to assimilate any military conquerors, in contrast to the warring states of its western and east and southeast , led to a Sino-centric view of the world. By the 1700s, China was very used to treating most states in contact with it (mostly its Asian neighbors) as tributary states--states that paid tributes and relied on Chinese military protection and political patronage. Terrill mentions that by the 1300s, Chinese agriculture was unrivaled in the world. (Terrill, p.90) This China centered view of the world, reflected in the Chinese characters for "China"--zhong guo, literally means the center of the world.

Instead of interacting intensely with their neighbors as the European states did, the Chinese, by 1600, tried to contain influence from the outside when the West pressured on China for trade. They confined all foreign merchants to China to trade in Canton (Guangzhou) only, hence it was called the Canton System. A whole class of Chinese merchants who served as the go-between of foreign merchants and Chinese merchants outside of Canton arose, called the compradors.

2. China's defeats in the 19th century.

China's self-centeredness set the stage for its downfall in the 19th century. Terrill concludes that China's defeat by Britain and later on other European countries was due to three reasons: the European countries were maritime powers, but China had before the 19th century never dealt with a maritime threat; narrowness and condescension to the outside world; and rigidity of system, represented by lack of good leadership. (Terrill, 92) The last three emperors in the Qing Dynasty were all very young. The third one was only 3 years old when he became emperor in 1908. This combination of factors made it difficult for China to defend itself against the attacks of Western battleships and canon fire. In 1842, China and Britain concluded the First Opium War with China making many concessions to Britain, including financial and territorial ones. Despite the opening of five southern cities as treaty ports to Britain for trade, Terrill argues the Chinese emperors still wanted to practice their old approach to the outside world, through containing the foreigners in the treaty ports, as they did with the Canton System. (Terrill, p.95) But the West refused to follow the Chinese cultural style as the Manchus (1644- 1911) did when they were Chinese emperors.

3. The king is dead. Long Live the King.

a. Warlord rule and decentralization:

In 1911, dissatisfaction with the Manchu government led to the overthrow of the Manchu dynastic rule and the ushering in of a republican system in 1912. Modern political parties such as the Nationalist Party and later the Communist Party were also established. Despite the "death" of the "king"--the overthrow of the imperial system, the practice of authoritarian rule continued, according to Terrill. Therefore, Yuan Shikai, president of the Republic of China, restored imperial rule in 1915, although he was able to rule as emperor for 100 days before popular protests forced him to abdicate the throne. (Terrill, 98-99) The overthrow of the Manchu Dynasty did not produce a new and viable political structure. The lack of a central government structure led to provincial and local authoritarianism which was further aided by the control of modern railroads by local warlords. (Terrill, 101)

b. Perceived need for a strong central power.

Under such circumstances, the new leaders in China, such as Mao Zedong (Tze-tung), future leader of the Chinese Communist party, determined that strong central power was necessary for China's advancement. (Terrill, 99-100) Other political leaders, such as Sun Yat-sen, founder of the Nationalist Party and the first president of the Chinese republic, failed in any attempt at grassroots politics and his successor to the leadership of the Nationalist Party, Chiang Kai-shek, was heavy-handed in his dictatorship and intolerance of the Communists, with whom Sun had built an alliance against the regional warlords in an attempt to jointly unify China. In April 1927, Chiang Kai-shek split with the Communists by slaughtering thousands of them in Shanghai and later in other big cities of China, forcing Communism to become an underground force and move to rural areas. Upon unification of China in 1928, Chiang Kai-shek exercised a strong central control of the Chinese regions that he could control. Between 1937 and 1945, Japan invaded China and the anti-Japanese war tipped the balance between the Nationalists and the Communists. The latter, through guerrilla warfare, gradually expanded their forces and in 1949, became the leaders of China, while the Nationalist government fled to Taiwan. China has remained under Communist rule to this day, which has changed greatly over the past fifty years. What the Communist government wants to let go last is centralized rule and a return to regional warlord rule of the 1920s.

c. Meshing of individualism and nationalism.

In the face of Western intrusions in China, especially Chinese humiliation after the end of World War I, when the former German colony of Shandong province in China was to be ceded to the Japanese at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, Chinese students protested on May 4th, 1919, which began what was later called the May Fourth Movement--a call for intensified Chinese nationalism and the introduction of Western science and democracy to strengthen China. Terrill argues that the nationalism championed in the May 4th Movement, often at the cost of individualism, and the concept of a unified Chinese race coinced by Sun Yat-sen to bolster Chinese nationalism, helped consolidate the idea of centralized rule. (Terrill, 103-108)

Thus, Terrill concludes that despite the overthrow of the imperial system, the idea of authoritarian rule was continued in the new, modern regimes in China, both as an ideology (nationalism focusing on the collective) and as statecraft (centralized rule and intolerance of opposition).