CHINA

Lionel Crouson from Les Cahiers Science et Vie

The Emperor’s New Ideas
An immense empire, a dispersed population made up of different people, a multitude of languages…Qin, the first emperor, nonetheless succeeds in unifying the country, developing and diffusing an exceptional array of knowledge.

Having survived a sinking ship off the coast of China in 1541, merchant Fernao Mendes Pinto is picked up for loitering, then condemned and sent to Peking to be judged on appeal. From the barge where he is held in chains on the Yang-Tse river, the unfortunate Portuguese observes with attention a brilliant Chinese civilization. Impressed, he writes with enthusiasm »cleanliness and climatic moderation […]¸the police, wealth, manners, clothing, the grandeurs of all one sees », and then adding « to add shine to all that, one finds a fine observation of justice, a government equal and so excellent, that any country could well envy ».(1)

Is Pinto then curious as to how China has managed to attain such a high degree of civilization?

To understand, one needs to go back 3000 years when, on the borders of the Central Plain, emerges an agricultural people who excel in the art of Bronze work. These men, and others more to the South, are the ancestors to the Chinese. They have left written records of which the most ancient date back to the XIVth century before our era. Dating back at least 3400 years, Chinese civilization was thus contemporary to Babylon, pharaonic Egypt, ancient Greece and then Rome. Yet the birth of Empire only goes back to -221, when Qin Shi Huangdi, known to us for his army of Terracotta soldiers, became the first emperor of China. Quickly, a scafolding of measures puts in place a centralized and authorian administration. Which will survive throughout all of Chinese history. How, from this period, did the idea come to Emperor Qin?

The answer could well be the sheer scope of his territory, deprived of any true geographical borders and whose dispersed peoples, whether Barbarian or not, speak a multitude of languages. How to transmit orders and have imperial edicts obeyed? The sovereign has a handy tool : Chinese writing, inherited from his ancestors which, by the use of non-alphabetical structures, coïncides perfectly with most of the languages of the territory. The emperor thus rests his power on large codes of written law which are strictly applied in all corners of China, thanks to civil servants. Soon the economy is run by the state, with the sapèque as sole currency, while all weights and measures are unified over the empire ( a unification which will need wait for the XIXth century in France).

The ourstanding moments of the reign of Qin Shi Huangdi are described with great precision in the Historical Memoirs of Sema Qian, written in the first century before our era. For very soon , the Chinese developed a pre-occupation with dates, the only solid reference point in their ever-changing society where peoples unify, divide, and are united again, on a territory with uncertain borders. This pre-occupation with detail comes to the fore in the year 2, with a great census of population carried out by the Han dynasty, which will serve to name the dominant ethnic group the Han. In order to manage this great project, the administrators needed to master a certain level of knowledge. “It is no chance happening that a mathematical work of high quality such as the Nine Chapters on Mathematical Procedures came forth during the Han period when the bureaucratic system was being established”(2) explains Kiyosi Yabuuti, former professor at Kyoto University.

According to figures of the period, the empire measured 7 million square kilometres, thus more than twelve times the surface of France today. Counted were 12 233 062 families for 59 594 978 subjects, thus close to 60 million inhabitants. (3) In year 2 China accounted for one quarter, even one third, of world population! This demographic weight is close to that which the Roman Empire will attain at its height. Then, if the Chinese are so numerous, what do we know of their habitat?

It answers to strict architectural norms, based on the rank and status of the inhabitant. The houses in vibrant colours have a symmetrical structure and are of non-lasting materials, such as wood or raw earth. This is why China today conserves few truly ancient monuments, compared to the solid heritage of stone of the Roman Empire. Its inheritance lies largely in know-how, scrupulously transmitted from one generation to the next through written treatises which guarantee keeping unchanged traditions.

“The most ancient and the most precise document we have on Chinese architecture dates from the Song dynasty. It is a treatise admirably illustrated and printed in 1103, the Yingzao fashi, credited to Li Jie, himself architect and builder of temples and official buildings in Kaifeng”(4) tells us Jacques Gernet, professor at the Collège de France. Yet, regardless of how fleeting the buildings in large cities, these are always in a grid perfectly oriented to the four cardinal points.

Are these megalopolii? For the period, yes. In the VIIIth century, Chang’an, today Ki’an, is, with 2 million inhabitants, the most populous city on earth. This cosmopolitan capital has large rectilinear avenues, vast temples, and majestic palaces. The beauty and prestige of this city are such that Japan decides to take it for model in putting up its own capital, Heijô-kyô, today Nara. In effect, China has always been an important trader for material and technical goods. There are many examples, with South-East Asia, Central Asia, Iran, the steppes of the North and even the Mediterranean world.”, explains Viviane Alleton, research associate at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, adding that these were brief periods of closure – but rarely total.

China then is not the large monolithic and closed country sometimes portrayed. It is true that the Empire of the Middle thinks of itself as a dominant center surrounded by Barbarians but so do other societies. Thus the practice of protecting itself on the North and West, while exporting its culture toward Korea, Vietnam and Japan. Remains a priority to assimilate or come to terms with the non-Hans on its territory and boot Barbarians from its frontiers.


Thus, the Chinese people are assembled around values and usages still prevalent today. Among these a moral stance, qualified as ‘confucian’, which accords great importance to family ties. These values are inculcated to the population by senior civil servants recruited through examination. A mode of recruitement not seen in Europe until the XIXth century.

So, is Confucianism a religion? Not as understood in the West. Indeed, there is not until the early XIXth century a Chinese term for religion. Confucianism is a humanist spiritual current emanating from the work of Kongfuzi (Confucius). It spread staring in the VIth century of our era. It touches social relations, strengthens hierarchy and codifies behaviour. A state doctrine in the first century, it remains so until the beginnings of the XXth century, marking Chinese society. It coexists with taoïsm, with celestial gods and divine emperors. This other spiritual stance is tied to nature, with lifestyle (hygiene) and meditation. Starting in the first century, to these two practices were added Buddhism, from India, with an emphasis on tolerance, denial, compassion and thus creating an opening for the hereafter.

Confucianism, taoïsm and Buddhism are all practiced, to various degrees by the Chinese in a non-exclusive fashion, in contrast to the strict adherence required of monotheistic religions. Thus armed with these values, the Chinese are capable of getting through the various crisis of their history. Crisis of which the most serious is a mongol invasion of almost a century, and from which the empire reforms itself once overthrown, in the XIVth century. The Ming dynasty, which follows, will be the most brilliant period of its history.

With 200m million inhabitants, China transforms itself. Maritime exploration begins, while printing – which had been xylographic – moves to mobile characters. Soon democratic distribution of writings gives birth to intellectual emulation and even political debate. The emperor Wanli (1563 – 1620) faces opposition from his own bureaucracy, organized along the lines of parties. However, it is far from his palace that the true struggle will appear. In effect, at this time, Portuguese merchants had landed in Macao. Soon they are joined by Spaniards and the Dutch, in the XVIIIth century. European courts love Chinese ceramics, in particular precious Ming pieces appreciated for tones of cobalt blue. China becomes an exporter of luxury goods, reinforced by commerce in cotton, spices and silks. Shangai then enjoys a standard of living superior to, or at least equivalent to that of England. This flowering is not merely at the level of commerce as Jacques Gernet explains:”The Chinese world has a history intellectual, religious, literary and artistic [...], and in all areas of knowledge, feelings, and thought, there was an accumulation of experiences, this movement of assimilation between old and new, of reinterpretation and evolution which is characteristic of all history [...]. Moral questioning, sociology, historical criticism and that of texts all developed sometimes more precociously than in Europe, so that China found itself, very often, an equal partner to the West when it discovered it”.

Thus in the year 1603 the emperor Wanli decides to admit a Westener to the Forbidden City. He is no conqueror or adventurer. Matteo Ricci is a man of knowledge mandated by Rome as a missionary of the company of Jesus. With great curiosity, Chinese men of knowledge, inheritors of a civilization of the millennia, will confront their knowledge with that of the Jesuits. It is a historical moment. Two great civilizations are about to meet...

Footnotes:
1-In Pérégrination, de Fernao Mendes Pinto, La Différence, 2002.
2-In Une histoire des mathématiques chinoises, de Kiyosi Yabuuti, Belin, 2000.
3- Chiffres cités dans Histoire et institutions de la Chine ancienne, de Henri Maspero, PUF, 1967.
4- In Le Monde chinois, de Jacques Gernet, Pocket Agora, 2006

READINGS :
Jacques Gernet, Le Monde chinois (3 tomes), Pocket Agora, 2006.
Viviane Alleton, L’Écriture chinoise. Albin Michel, 2008.
Kiyosi Yabuuti, Une histoire des mathématiques chinoises. Belin, 2000.
Chine, de Pékin à Hong-Kong. Guides Bleus. Hachette, 2007.