Two letters -- on the irreverent irrelevance of American critiques of Mao and the Chinese revolution
wchao37  Updated: 2004-01-12 18:23

I

I have visited many university libraries in the States during my twenty-one long drives from coast to coast or from border to border earlier in life.

At each library, I tried to go through all the DS700 books written by Western scholars on Mao, and believe me when I say that I know what they are saying about Mao.

Social science, in contrast with other scientific disciplines, is notoriously lacking in exactitude when it comes to psychological scrutiny in the biographical descriptions of historical figures.

There are very few works in Chinese giving an in-depth analysis of the inner world of George Washington, for example, and all we hear about him are anecdotal accounts of his early days especially the story about the tree.

In a similar vein, the reason I said Western scholarly work on Chinese leaders are in many instances lacking in depth and accuracy in their portrayals and are like "scratching away an itch through the boots" is because after reading the material on the Chinese revolution and Mao from Western sources, that's the lingering feeling with which I came away.

Thorough referencing in science is a time-tested means of ensuring continuity and relevancy, but when this method is used in social science there is the danger of endless "Dou quan zi." One tends to repeat an erroneous reference in vogue depending on the perception of the nation itself. When China gets stronger and richer, the evaluation of Mao and his epochal contributions will definitely be seen in a different light amongst pundits and academicians.

This is just a forum and as such, it is not exactly an academic treatise when we talk about Mao here. But you can get a flavor of what the Chinese people are thinking about him. Still, the sampling of these opinions may not pass the mustard test because it presupposes that the English-speaking segment of the nation is representative of the population at large.

One thing is sure, however -- without a bilingual background it is virtually impossible to understand Mao because his roots are deeply imbedded in ancient Chinese history and philosophy. For example, did you notice that he gave the works of C'hu Yuan to Premier Tanaka of Japan when the latter visited Beijing on the occasion of the establishment of relationship between the two nations in 1972? What symbolic significance was that meant to convey in the first place? If you don't know C'hu Yuan how would you know the answer?

Let me explain further what I am saying here.

Historical figures are the product not only of their contemporaneous environment, they are also the ultimate product of the long histories of their nations. You cannot understand George Washington unless you know about Alfred the Great. You cannot comprehend Napoleon unless you know Corsican history, and you sure cannot understand George Bush unless you know about the utterly ruthless Longshanks of England.

A great man such as Mao understands the world as few of his contemporaries do. He knows what he has to do to make it a better place, and goes about doing it without worrying about any personal sacrifices.

You don't hear about the so-called mistakes of other world figures emphasized almost to the exclusion of everything else. There is nothing inexplicable about this phenomenon. This is because the uniqueness and greatness of Mao defy all imagination and Westerners are still smarting from defeat at the hands of this man.

On the military side alone, from the Chinese Civil War against an U.S.-sponsored Chiang Kai-shek in 1946, through the Korean War (1950-53), Dienbienphu (1954), and Vietnam War (1963-75), he did not lose one single engagement when soldiers directly or indirectly under his command fought against Westerners.

II

Since you are willing to discuss topics with a level-headed attitude, I am going to respond to you in a likewise manner. Remember, wchao37 talks at the level of the discussant. If he barks, I throw a bone; if he yells, I roar; if he bends his one-inch bark into his twin, I slash it off with an iron whip; but if he controls himself and argues with poise -- like you are doing here -- I'll reward him with undiluted charm on the rocks.

That doesn't mean I am going to let you off easily, because we are talking about one of the greatest men of all times and no 'face' can be or need to be given during such an encounter.

Our discussion today is short, but eventually it can become longer as the need arises. The topic of Mao enlivens five thousand years of recorded history in China, and there's much to talk about.

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On Ross Terrill with minor allusion to others.

The works of Womack and Terrill show the greatest pitfall in the approach of Western scholars on Chinese studies: irreverent irrelevance.

I said "irreverent" because they always apply a double standard when talking about Chinese matters; "irrelevance" because to a sophisticated Chinese reader, it would seem as if they can never get at the core of the discussion due to their experiential and linguistic limitations. That's why I said it's like trying to scratch away an itch through the boots.

Your mention about certain professors 'knowing' the ancient classics in Chinese is not very convincing. For example, I have taken four years of both college-level German and French, and I have traveled to Germany and France twice (the last one three years ago to Berlin and Paris plus other cities). I can read most German and French literature with a dictionary. Yet I still find it almost impossible to understand Bismarck's policies in regards to the French, especially his thought processes as reflected in his telegrams before the 1870 Franco-Prussian War which more than anything else led to the unification and rise of modern Germany.

Womack is Professor of Foreign Affairs, University of Virginia at Charlottesville, Virginia, and he is a good man. But he doesn't understand squat about Chinese, at least not more than I can claim to understand German.

Likewise, Berkeley's Ross Terrill is pre-eminent amongst so-called 'China hands' in the States. Yet he too suffers from the disease called "Presentism" which makes him irreverently irrelevant in the first place.

Presentism is a term I had formerly explained. It means trying to assess past practices using present-day Western parameters.

Ross Terrill is quite representative of what's wrong in American academia when it comes to matters Chinese. Read his books like "New Chinese Empire," "China in Our Time," "...Red House," and the biographies of Jiang Qing, Deng and Mao. To me, he really doesn't understand China and reading his books is like eating ice-cream in deep Winter -- it adds to your calorie intake but its consumption is rather untimely.

For instance, in his book "The New Chinese Empire," many sections use circuitous or impossibly vague arguments.

Take this sentence for example:

"Historically, the centralization-devolution swings were sometimes a prelude to dynastic decline and fragmentation, but not always" (page 180). He is using words like "synergy" in international relations without clearly circumscribed definitions, just as in your case you are using the word "oriented" in the following sentence in your post without clearly defining its meaning:

"….the conviction that mobilized mass possess the radical political power, political activities oriented by effective actions" -- judge for yourself, and you would agree that it is not the easiest to understand in this context.

Terrill says that China does not hold national, free elections and therefore Chinese citizens have no say in their government. This shows that he is unfamiliar with the legal traditions of China. Elections are not the only, and not even the most effective, mode of participation. Even one Taidu critic characterizes Terrill's problem in the following way:

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"Chinese participate in a variety of ways...refusal to attend meetings, local elections, protests against local cadres, letter writing (which Terrill dismisses offhand as 'petitioning the court'), etc. - Some of what Terrill writes contradicts what I have learned (not to say I am right; conflicting sources automatically make me wary). For example: Terrill claims the protests following the accidental American bombing of the Chinese embassy in Serbia were coordinated by the government. I was under the impression that the government tried its best to get Chinese to stop protesting for the sake of Sino-American harmony. - Terrill can be overly harsh on China. In his discussion of Sino-Japanese relations, he criticizes China for not letting World War II issues go. To be fair, Japan never has apologized for atrocities committed in that war, and the nation's textbooks do not address the question honestly. The fact that China also censors its textbooks' history does not lessen Japan's blame. Also, there were a few times I felt Terrill was a micrometer away from calling China "Chicom," and he did call it a 'semi-terrorist outfit.' This seems a bit much - Terrill's argument seems to rely too much on emotion. He taps into American frustrations at China's grandstanding, and finds a historical basis for it. - Some of the accusations Terrill waves at China could be said just as equally about America, or any country for that matter. He states China doesn't have allies, and therefore they are inconsistent and dishonest in foreign policy. No country has allies, they have interests, and these interests change over time. Terrill's accusation singles China out, but can be applied to every country in every time."

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Remember that the critic here is a Taidu and he has no reason to positively assess any of China's policies.

Terrill is a Japan apologist and his stand on Taiwan itself is but a microcosmic reflection of his overall bigoted stand on Chinese sovereignty over large tracts of our nation's land, and all his malicious comments are cloaked in seemingly neutral terms whose insidious nature is too subtle to arouse suspicion at the first reading.

I think you have been too easily impressed by Western scholars. If you had read libraries of books on Chinese matters in English instead of just limiting yourself to a few authors, you wouldn't have been so fast in falling head over heels under their mesmerizing spell with their academic standings. There are many educated fools in our world and you have to be extremely circumspect in discerning what kinds of goods are being peddled. Most of them have to give opinions sanctioned by their financial backers. In the case of one scholar at the University of Hawaii who failed to toe the line, his funding was abruptly cut off.

Terrill even denies Chinese sovereignty over Tibet, Xinjiang, Manchuria, and of course, Taiwan. Like most American academicians, they have very selective memories of their own nation's past. While China's sovereignty over Tibet has been in continuous existence at least since the 13th century, North America's falling under Anglo domination is of much more recent vintage.

Remember that the Louisiana Purchase by President Thomas Jefferson from Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was exactly two centuries ago in 1804. Many People mistakenly think of the Louisiana Purchase as that of the little state of Louisiana, while in fact it covers almost a third of present-day United States.

Without the Purchase, America wouldn't have been able to expand to the Pacific and hence achieve her present status as a world power; Napoleon was willing to sell the land cheap because he needed the money to finance his campaigns into the Heart of Europe. He figured that if he were able to subdue continental Europe as well as England, America's falling in line would be the next logical outcome. So why should he haggle over the price in 1804? Remember that his greatest victory was a year later in 1805 at the Battle of Austerlitz, and the Louisana Purchase provided the financial backing for the adventu 

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