Human Security and the Chinese State: Historical Transformations and the Modern Quest for Sovereignty

Human Security and the Chinese State

The modern state is the dominant – but not exclusive – provider of human security. China has attempted to reconstitute itself as a modern sovereign state on several occasions in the past century, driven by the quest for security and order. In addition to the state, family and social institutions have extended human longevity by reducing violent and preventable deaths. Twenty-two centuries ago the imperial Confucian state increased human security; its collapse in 1911 led to several experiments in state-building and adaptation. This groundbreaking book outlines a working theory of human security, and applies it to an analysis of the dynamics of the Chinese state. Professor Bedeski demonstrates how sovereignty of the state reflects primary human concerns of survival, where the state’s fundamental purpose is to preserve citizens’ lives. Using his theory of human security, he describes eight “meta-constitutions” from the Legalist Qin empire to the potential federal state represented by Taiwan’s continued autonomy. The incompleteness of Chinese sovereignty remains a key variable in understanding the policy and strategy of modernization, both within China and among neighboring East Asian states. His study bridges humanist and social sciences in combining political theory with historical, literary, cinematic, and sociological materials and ideas. Human Security and the Chinese State provides an original approach to the last two thousand years of Chinese political history that will appeal to scholars of Chinese politics, history, human security, and political theory. Robert E. Bedeski is Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Science, and Program Professor Emeritus, Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives (CAPI) at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.

Routledge contemporary China series

1 Nationalism, Democracy and National Integration in China Leong Liew and Wang Shaoguang 2 Hong Kong’s Tortuous Democratization A comparative analysis Ming Sing 3 China’s Business Reforms Institutional challenges in a globalised economy Edited by Russell Smyth and Cherrie Zhu 4 Challenges for China’s Development An enterprise perspective Edited by David H. Brown and Alasdair MacBean

7 Globalization and the Chinese City Fulong Wu 8 The Politics of China’s Accession to the World Trade Organization The dragon goes global Hui Feng 9 Narrating China Jia Pingwa and his fictional world Yiyan Wang 10 Sex, Science and Morality in China Joanne McMillan 11 Politics in China Since 1949 Legitimizing authoritarian rule Robert Weatherley

5 New Crime in China Public order and human rights Ron Keith and Zhiqiu Lin

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13 Unemployment in China Economy, human resources and labour markets Edited by Grace Lee and Malcolm Warner

Non-Governmental Organizations in Contemporary China Paving the way to civil society? Qiusha Ma

14 China and Africa Engagement and compromise Ian Taylor 15 Gender and Education in China Gender discourses and women’s schooling in the early twentieth century Paul J. Bailey

16 SARS Reception and interpretation in three Chinese cities Edited by Deborah Davis and Helen Siu 17 Human Security and the Chinese State Historical transformations and the modern quest for sovereignty Robert E. Bedeski

Human Security and the Chinese State Historical transformations and the modern quest for sovereignty

Robert E. Bedeski

First published 2007 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2007 Robert E. Bedeski All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Bedeski, Robert E. Human security and the Chinese state : historical transformations and the modern quest for sovereignty / by Robert E. Bedeski. p. cm. – (Routledge contemporary China series ; 17) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. China – Politics and government. 2. Social contract. 3. Security (Psychology) – Political aspects – China. 4. State, The. 5. Sovereignty. I. Title. JQ1510.B43 2007 320.1'50951–dc22 ISBN 0-203-96475-6 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10: 0–415–41255–2 (hbk) ISBN10: 0–203–96475–6 (ebk) ISBN13: 978–0–415–41255–1 (hbk) ISNB13: 978–0–203–96475–0 (ebk)

2006024055

For dolce Pamela

Contents

Preface List of abbreviations 1

x xiii

Human survival, human institutions, and human security

1

Dimensions of human security: foundations in individual human life

4

3

The modern sovereign nation-state (MSNS)

24

4

Prologue to a theory of human security

44

5

A notational theory of human security

62

6

Actualizing imperial sovereignty in ancient China

77

7

Claiming dynastic sovereignty under the imperial meta-constitution

103

Sovereignty and state-building in late Qing and Republican China

130

Contemporary China’s incomplete sovereignty: fusion, succession, and adaptation

155

Notes Bibliography Index

173 178 187

2

8

9

Preface

Security is a twentieth-century political concept that has been intrinsic to the modern state. Wars, revolutions, and national security have derived their rationales from protecting the state, to the extent that citizens have become the instrument of its defense, rather than the state protecting the individual. The modern welfare state emerged in part to compensate citizens for their obligations by transferring some of the state’s resources to those who would fight its wars. With the end of the Cold War in 1991, decades of war and preparation for wars seemed over, and states could decrease the claims of paramount defense. The United Nations stepped in, supported by a new NGO infrastructure, to transform security from a state-centric to a human-centric priority. States not only had sovereign rights and institutions to protect themselves, but many had magnified and abused their power at the expense of the lives and wealth of their citizens. The opportunity for a new global order, based on protecting humans rather than states, presented new hope. Human security represented such a shifted outlook and evolved as an enlarged program of human development – one which subdues and subordinates state claims over citizens. A global outlook and appropriate institutions would replace the parochial actions of states which acted only in their narrow national interest. Human security became a program of action to demonstrate the efficacy of transnational actors in humanitarian operations, and in the process, build institutions to replace “selfish” states. After a decade and a half following the Cold War, the vision of a new world order based on regional and global institutions to deliver security to people has diminished. The United Nations has proven to be as corrupt as some governments and remains ineffective in critical issues. When the post-earthquake tsunami struck Southeast Asia on December 26, 2004, states – led by the United States – proved most rapid and effective in delivery of critical material and equipment. In Rwanda, Sudan, Yugoslavia, and other places of human crisis, international organizations have been largely peripheral. The modern sovereign nation-state (MSNS) still governs the distribution of security benefits to humanity. This is not to dismiss the importance of human security as a global concern, but to remind ourselves that protection of human life is the primary goal of political action. Whether this protecting is accomplished by NGOs, the United Nations, religious orders, or nation-states is less important than beneficial outcomes.

Preface

xi

To determine the best agency or agencies to maximize human security – the protection of human lives – it is necessary to understand how this had been accomplished in the past. If past agencies have been successful, even partially, their lessons ought to be examined and the agencies themselves made more efficient. But an adequate approach to human security requires an inventory of traditional and recent institutions. Some states and societies have been more successful than others, as a cursory glance at life expectancy tables demonstrates. Longevity of citizens is not only a by-product of industrialization and democracy, but can be considered the primary goal of human security. The first part of this book dissects the concept of human security as a product of human existence. Each of us exists in the modern world at levels of individual, person, and citizen, and each level of existence provides a degree of human security. Globalists seek to add a fourth level based on species’ collective responsibility – not necessarily a fanciful or unrealistic proposition, but an idea that can be effective only by building on existing adaptations and instruments of security. Improvement of global human security entails propagating the benefits of Western modernization to more benighted regions of the world – a proposition not likely to be welcomed among an emerging global elite, consisting of Western and non-Western leaders. The primary purpose of this analysis of human security is to build a theory which can be an instrument for discovering variations in the historical Chinese state. Herein, theory is a means, not an end in itself. The second part applies the theory of human security to the history of China – a society which achieved a relatively high level of pre-modern well-being for significant numbers of people over many centuries. With the breakdown of the Confucian state, Chinese elites attempted several variations of the nation-state to establish a new order. These experiments in state-building continued after the Communist revolution in 1949, and the contemporary challenge from Taiwan is that China’s current unitary state may not be the final solution for the People’s Republic of China (PRC). A federal state may be one resolution of the cross-straits question, although its acceptability to Beijing is doubtful at present. China’s long history represents an alternative approach to human security, and modern experiments in state-building emphasize how Chinese elites sought to achieve wealth and power by transforming their polity into a MSNS – though their task remains incomplete as long as Taiwan retains its autonomy. My two-stage approach is admittedly unique, and some might call it idiosyncratic. Much of my intellectual life has been spent trying to reconcile Confucius with Thomas Hobbes – the individual in the family versus in the state. In this quest, students, colleagues, friends, and anonymous critics have stimulated me to explore questions and approaches not well travelled. The joys of retirement from teaching have been leavened by existential questions: especially why are we so fortunate in the advanced industrial world to have increasing longevity, much longer than our ancestors or in less advanced countries? As I pursued this question in the context of human security, the answers opened up an analytical framework for making sense of Chinese history and the pursuit of state-building. While these

xii

Preface

may appear to be two very distinct questions, modern China’s quest for human security and sovereignty cannot be understood merely through historical narrative. I hope my formulations of human security will be useful to scholars in seeing new patterns of continuity as well as a reminder that the modern state remains a fundamental fact of human existence – for better or worse. Chalmers Johnson has been a continuing source of encouragement and inspiration in this search. Kathleen Ch’i Wei-li Bedeski has been my pillar of support and insight in seeing family as the core of human security. Daughter Pamela, as she goes from home to a wide and wonderful world, motivated me to ask if it is safe out there. To her I dedicate this book in the hope that she will find security, happiness, and fulfilment. Victoria, Canada December 2006

Abbreviations

Av Cc CCP CPSU DMS7 DPP DPRK Ei Ep Es ER ERc F FDR GLF GMD GRS4 HSc HSi HSp HSF ICS2 Ki Kp Ks KMT Lp Ls M MCS6 MSNS Oc Os

Allocated values State claims on citizens Chinese Communist Party Communist Party of the Soviet Union Dengist Market State (1979–present) Democratic People’s Party Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Natural environment Political economy Social economy External relations of states Reciprocal claims by states Family Franklin D. Roosevelt Great Leap Forward Guomindang Guomindang Republican State (1928–present) Human security in the state: citizen Human security of individual Human security of person Human security failure Imperial Confucian State (206 BC–AD 1911) Knowledge, individual Political knowledge Knowledge, social Kuomintang Political liberty Social liberty Military Maoist Communist State (1956–1976) Modern Sovereign Nation-State State obligation of citizens Social obligation

xiv

Abbreviations

PF PLA PRC QLS1 RNS3 ROCOT Sa Sc SCS5 SEZ SF Tc TIS8 UNDP USSR Ve Vl Vo Wi WMD

Political friction coefficient People’s Liberation Army People’s Republic of China Qin Legalist State (221–206 BC) Republican Nation State (1911–1927) Republic of China on Taiwan (1949–present) Actualized sovereignty Claimed sovereignty Stalinist Communist State (1949–1956) Special Economic Zones Coefficient of social friction Territorial claims of the state Taiwan Independent State (1949–present) United Nations Development Programme Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Value – equality Value – liberty Value – order Individual will to live Weapons of mass destruction

1

Human survival, human institutions, and human security

The human species is naked in his stories, stripped of those tendencies toward good which last only so long as the habit of civilization lasts. But the habit of civilization is fragile; a sudden change in circumstances and humanity reverts to its primeval savagery. (Milosz 1953: 122)

To climb a mountain, the adventurer must prepare two things – a plan and proper equipment. The plan includes route, alternatives, and objective. Equipment depends on the nature of the mountain, whether there are glaciers and sheer cliffs, anticipated weather, and the competence and experience of the climber himself. Safety is a primary concern, but risks are inevitable. The safest course is not to start the adventure at all, but reaching the summit can be the most exhilarating event of a lifetime. The Chinese state is a conceptual mountain – it has been mapped and described by historians and political scientists. We know this “mountain” exists for it has been part of the global landscape for over two millennia. It has quaked periodically, but returns to unity and power. China’s latest convulsions occurred with the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, and it is now a major economic and military power in the world. Language, culture, geography, and social patterns forge strong links with the past, yet technology, industry, and government seem to break sharply with tradition. How can we map this conceptual mountain? My plan is to examine the Chinese state as it evolved from the empire of Qin Shi Huangdi (221–206 BC) through the various dynasties to the Republic and People’s Republic of China. The 2100-year history is rich in human suffering and accomplishment, and has been amply researched and described by scholars. Simply to retell that story offers little insight into the dynamics of the Chinese state, so we must gather our “equipment.” Much has been written on Chinese politics, and a large body of literature on state, nation, and sovereignty exists in the West. This “climbing equipment” is solid and tested, but is it appropriate for climbing the Chinese mountain without some modification? Can we carry out our plan by treating China as an ordinary state – a case study like any other state? The political literature on China suggests

2

Humans: survival and security

otherwise. The modern Chinese state has followed a unique course in the twentieth century. From the start in 1949, Chinese Communism has displayed a renegade Marxism, now transmogrifying into a proto-capitalist society under Communist Party dictatorship. To overcome this contradiction – Chinese uniqueness versus the Western conceptual vocabulary drawn from, and specific to, Euro-American historical experience – a human security approach will be used. There are significant limitations with the existing literature in this relatively new concept, with its emphasis on humanitarian policy and delicacy over sovereignty and use of force, so some adaptations are in order that can provide our necessary equipment. Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) is the originator of modern thinking about human security. In his Leviathan, he saw men as atomized creatures at war with each other and with nature until they rationally surrendered their autonomy to the Leviathan state. He described the paradox of how men acquired a large increment of self-protection by giving up their right of self-protection to the state. Modern human security writers tend to embellish this role of the state by calling on successful states (those that are able to deliver the benefits of human security that result in extended longevity and relative freedom from want and fear) to share their resources with less fortunate nations and peoples. At the same time, international organizations are summoned to disburse these state benefits to the victims of failed states. Taking our cue from Hobbes, a human security approach offers fresh perspective on man’s relation to the state, and can provide an analytical framework for understanding the evolution of the Chinese nation-state. The merit of human security is that it begins with the individual person, in contrast to much of the twentieth century’s concern with national security. Human security is simply, “protection of the individual human.” What is “human”? In Chapter 2, we analyze how humans exist at five levels: individual (biological), person (social), citizen (political), globizen (global/species consciousness), and soul (religious), and how these layers of existence express a declining efficacy of human protection. That is to say, a human life is best protected by an individual’s own efforts, and least by religious belief. Chapter 3 examines the state as a human security apparatus, and how it has been distorted in the last century. In Chapters 4 and 5, a theory of human security is developed through the vehicle of five notational formulae. Each formula addresses a level of human existence (excluding globizens and souls belonging to the realm of sentiment rather than efficacy in the present, though often having the power to evoke human security actions). The formulae are cumulative, starting with individuals, with subsequent formulae building on each previous one. The individual human life is the existential and conceptual starting point of our theory of human security. Whereas Hobbes linked the human individual more or less directly to the sovereign state, my theory of human security emphasizes the importance of person/society as a critical link between individual and state. In China, society provided human protection when the state was weak and fragmented, during those periods when the state was unable to deliver human security to its subjects/citizens.

Humans: survival and security

3

Chapter 6 examines the application of human security theory to the Imperial Chinese state. Formula three addresses actualized sovereignty, and derives its efficacy from the aggregated human security of individuals/persons in the state, and is modulated by other factors. Actual sovereignty encompasses the real scope of a state’s control and jurisdiction. In this, military effectiveness remains primary. States also make extensive claims of sovereignty over citizens and territory, and Chapter 7 explores this claimed sovereignty in the context of the imperial state. These claims express general values of how government and society should be organized, and are identified as order, equality, and liberty. The continuity of the imperial state (abbreviated as “ICS2”) over numerous dynastic shifts suggests a recurring pattern of claimed sovereignty. This pattern is termed “meta-constitution,” and allows us to identify at least eight state meta-constitutions since unification of China in 221 BC to the present. The immediate precursor of the ICS2, the unifying Qin empire, was substantially different in its meta-constitution from subsequent state-forms, and though brief, deserves examination as the Qin Legalist State (QLS1). Chapter 8 analyzes the Republic of China, 1912–49, and the transfer of the Guomindang Republican State (GRS4) to Taiwan in 1949. The simultaneous existence of two meta-constitutions – one on the mainland and the other on Taiwan – has resulted in the continued “incomplete sovereignty” of both, in terms of the difference between actualized sovereignty and claimed sovereignty. This suggests the theorem that, the greater the gap between these two forms of sovereignty, the more intense the potential for conflict. The possible emergence of a third meta-constitution (Taiwan Independence State TIS8) further complicates the sovereignty map of contemporary China. In the final chapter, we examine contemporary China through the lens of human security theory. Three Communist meta-constitutions, in a space of thirty years (1949–79) emerged and each competed for sovereignty with GRS4. Half a decade into the twenty-first century, the latest Communist meta-constitution must deal with two competing nonCommunist meta-constitutions for the soul of China. In these pages, human security theory will provide equipment for “climbing the Chinese mountain.” From the summit, details will merge in the distance below, and we should be able to discern larger patterns. States are the tectonic plates of human history, and humans – as individuals, persons, and citizens – are the energy source of state formation, transformation, and collapse. Acting purposefully – to live, and to live well when possible – mankind has created and assembled social institutions and created states. The MSNS has demonstrated its lethality to its citizens and to citizens of other states in the twentieth century, and yet remains the supreme globally accepted form of political membership and action. Europeans are trying to move beyond the nation-state, creating a supranational European Union as a type of confederal state, and liberal intellectuals regard the nation-state as passé and even obsolete as history moves on. For the other three-quarters of mankind, however, the MSNS remains their vision of future completeness, and they see it as not yet accomplished. In China’s view, only unification of Taiwan with the mainland will fulfil its sovereign destiny. Thus, for China, the MSNS remains in the future, while in the West, it is a legacy to be transcended.

2

Dimensions of human security Foundations in individual human life

I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country. (Nathan Hale) No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true. (Jobs 2005) And death is as finite as it gets. It has closure. Plus the death ratio is low, only 1:1 in occurrences per person. (O’Rourke 1998: 3)

Human security and human life – narratives of survival Human security is the life-safety of individuals – its absolute minimum requirement is life, with death as the limiting condition. Modern polite society has bracketed discussion of life and death as unpleasant and even unspeakable, almost pornographic, though personal experience, popular culture, and religion manage to keep the subject as an immediate presence. One cannot discuss human security without confronting the fundamental mortality of all life. Who is responsible for the safety of individuals? The Christian asks: “Am I not my brother’s keeper?” And the sceptic replies, “Doesn’t one’s ‘brother’ have the responsibility for his own safety, particularly if that ‘brother’ is a total stranger?” Human security is enhanced by personal responsibility plus altruism, or at least helpful concern for others and by adding sponsorship of life to the scope of the state, death can be presumably postponed to the limits of natural longevity. No man is entirely helpless, although individual ability and resources to survive in difficult circumstances vary greatly. Prudence is the sense to avoid dangerous and life-threatening conditions, but as the 2004 tsunami demonstrated, millions were caught by surprise through no fault of their own and many thousands perished by an “Act of God.”

Human security in individual human life

5

Human security begins with individuals – a term I will use to denote humans as discrete biological organisms with rational and emotional faculties. This does not include the overt self-consciousness of modern individualism, a relatively recent development. Historian F. J. Teggart noted the absence of individuality in primitive life, It is difficult for the modern man to realize that, in the earlier period, individuality did not exist; that the unit was not the single life, but the group; and that this was the embodiment of a relatively fixed system, from which escape was normally impossible. So completely was the individual subordinated to the community that art was just the repetition of tribal designs, literature the repetition of tribal songs, and religion the repetition of tribal rites. (Teggart 1962: 272) In our own age of individualism, literature and film are rich sources for portraying the drama of individual survival. For example, the film Touching the Void, tells of two mountain climbers and their perilous 1985 ascent of the west face of Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes. After Joe breaks his leg, he falls into a crevasse, summons every skill and mental resource to return to base camp alone – demonstrating the near-limits of human endurance and self-rescue. His climbing companion decided that the altruistic risk of endangering his own life to find Joe, whom he assumed had died in the fall, was not worth taking. Safety is both the avoidance of life-threatening danger, and saving life when danger has been encountered. Stories of self-rescue demonstrate the innate ability of individuals to preserve their lives in extremis, and provide an inventory of what an individual requires and possesses to survive. Many stories portray exceptionally strong individuals, provide a definition of heroism, and also demonstrate the limits of human survival. They may provide a realizable ideal, although only rarely achievable. Weak or unlucky individuals perish. Through narrative, we can identify elements of individual human security that contribute to individual extreme survival, and this helps to identify how groups and societies have built institutions to provide safety and security for weaker members – those who are less able to protect themselves from the rigors and cruelties of the savage world – generally the aged, the infirm, women, children, and infants. Institutions also establish norms of behavior that reinforce solidarity and mechanisms for group preservation. Whether these security institutions emerged out of altruism, self-interest, biological imperatives, or social contract is less important than the fact that key social institutions are built on identifiable human security elements internalized and carried by each individual, and they reflect the efficacy of those elements in the general protection and enhancement of human life. Building a theory of human security starts with the life-requirements of the individual. We will then adapt and extend these parameters to social institutions,

6

Human security in individual human life

and upon these, observe how the social matrix of persons has been incorporated into the MSNS, which ideally delivers human security benefits to its citizens.

The test of human security – biological life of the individual Human security begins with recognition of the human individual as a biological entity with a primeval will to live, an intellect to comprehend and respond to his environment, senses that provide information to mind and body, limbs that act on command and direction of the individual, and emotions that engage him1 in action with self and others. The ultimate test of human security is whether the individual lives or dies under abnormal circumstances – defined as the occurrence of a death caused by other than natural exhaustion of a body’s inborn and acquired life resources. Jean-Paul Sartre captured the mind–body dilemma in his existentialist novel, La Nausee, in which his protagonist expresses disgust with man as a physiological being determined by the laws of nature and society, and subject to the destructive effects of time: “I exist, I am the one who keeps it up. I. The body lives by itself once it has begun. But thought – I am the one who continues it, unrolls it . . . My thought is me: that’s why I can’t stop. I exist because I think . . . ” (Sartre 1973: 135). His Cartesian soliloquy disengages mind from body, but he – as mind – will cease to exist when the body dies, unless he believes in an eternal soul – which he likely will not. The individual human is a mortal being – he lives and he dies. Medicine and other sciences combine to prolong life and postpone death, but there is no escape. The biological individual incorporates mind and is a thinking creature, able to remember the past, observe the present, and contemplate various futures, as well as to monitor the condition of his body for hunger, pain, fatigue, heat or cold, and to take voluntary action to maintain life and health. The individual will avoid danger, evade threats, or confront them if necessary to maintain his own life. The will to live is the most powerful drive, not only in humans but in all species. This will to live is intrinsic to the core of human security – the biological individual is the primary steward of his life. Human evolution continues to be at the center of man’s view of the human species. Increasing questions are raised about Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, which is criticized as lacking adequate evidence and not a theory at all. Ideas of a designed universe, once dismissed as disguised creationism, are finding a wider hearing. Biochemistry, the study of life at its molecular level, is opening new directions of inquiry, and forcing us to consider man as an intricate machine whose parts could only most improbably come together as a functioning unit. For scientist-writer Michael J. Behe, the molecule is “Darwin’s Black Box” and is only in the past several decades being opened and explored (Behe 1996). In the social sciences, biopolitics has attempted to incorporate and integrate biological discoveries, particularly from the Darwinian perspective, into new insights into human political behavior. The “black box” of the social sciences is the human individual, whose DNAdetermined physiology is rigorously homogeneous in fulfilling the functions of

Human security in individual human life

7

life sustenance. Nearly every organ in the human body has a role to play, and biochemists are discovering how the “machine” works at the molecular level. Few of the organs respond directly to the brain – the supposed source and center of human reason – the machine insouciantly carries out its practical role of supplying and processing the nutrients and ridding waste products, having no consciousness of its own, and generally responding to few orders from the brain. Appetites and passions tend to be unresponsive to reason, and are directly connected to the will to live. But let us suppose there is one specific organ in each human body – invisible because it is embedded in the complex of neurons and cells – which is the unconscious system of integrating all the life-sustaining functions that have such precise activities, and summoning all possible resources when the body faces life-threatening emergency. Suppose this “organ” consists of an invisible web analogous to the electronic worldwide web – constantly sending signals and responding, searching the environment and contacting different nodes. For the sake of convenience, let us call this “organ” the Life Web, because we can deduce its existence from the self-regulating mechanisms of the body, but we can neither trace its origins nor see it under dissection or microscope, nor even map it out – even at the molecular level. We can deduce that it is connected to the brain, since information of the senses flows there, and the brain commands a response, or stores the information for future use. Finally, let us suppose that the Life Web either evolved or was created to prolong the life of the biological organism, and that man, presumably the most advanced of living creatures, possesses the most perfect or complex Life Web. Why is he the most advanced? Because he is able not only to prolong his individual existence with immediate “instinctive” behavior to flee visible danger and avoid pain, but has interacted, developing language along the way, with other humans to cooperate and accumulate tools and weapons and knowledge to prolong existence. Human dominance in the world may be the result of superb integration between the brain and Life Web in our species. Certain kinds of collective behavior are observable in most animal species, some attributable to learning and some to inborn traits, but nothing approaching the sophistication and complexity of humans, owing in large part to sophisticated language. Mind–body cooperation facilitates survival. There are rare cases when humans “choose” death but these might be explained as events where individuals (a) anticipate a future of unbearable pain, (b) altruistically sacrifice themselves for their fellow human beings, or (c) envision an afterlife far sweeter than the present. The dominant principle of the mind–body relationship of the individual is to maintain the life – the survival and well-being – of the human organism. This requires preservation from harm and injury, accumulation of materials that contribute to biological existence (food, water, shelter), avoidance of danger and pain, and keeping company with others who will contribute to this life-enhancing project. Human security is a strategy of inquiry proceeding from these elementary considerations, particularly the presumption that the human mind–body entity not only seeks its own preservation in an animalistic way of pain and danger avoidance, but in a uniquely human way of using language and tools,

8

Human security in individual human life

forming alliances and establishing bonds, and accumulating knowledge and institutions to refine and extend existence of the individual. The dilemma of the human security approach (as I undertake it) is that each being struggles a lifetime (however long that may be) to stay alive, and ultimately fails. (So, as Jobs declaims, there will be room for others.) The consciousness of each individual is the “ghost in the machine” and is subjectively aware of life’s battles. This conscious experience is unique, and each personal crisis is unique in the history of mankind. The specific details of a particular aged aunt struggling with stomach cancer in Brooklyn never occurred before in history, and will never happen again. Each surge of pain has a particular fingerprint of time and source never to be replicated. Snowflakes will sooner become identical than any human experience will be exactly duplicated. Recognizing the principle that the human mind–body primarily strives to survive, we can assemble some observations on how we actually postpone death and analyze these to provide a starting point for a theory of human security which focuses chiefly on human survival. Recognizing that each human experience is unique and fundamentally incomparable with any other, we nonetheless can take a certain class of human experience – crisis of survival – and try to understand how people have succeeded or failed – that is, lived, died, or suffered yet survived. The dichotomy of mind and body as the essence of individual is severely tested in the lives of prisoners. The state, as chief prison-keeper in totalitarian or wartime democratic societies, transforms mind–body individuals into homogeneous units. Under prison conditions, the unit individual is primarily a biological organism, whose life condition is a binary toggle – either “on” or “off.” The role of mind is reduced to maintaining a will to live. Hitler or Stalin or Mao Zedong or Pol Pot genocides consisted of turning off the life “switch” of millions of individual prisoners, or adjusting it dangerously close to “off.” One of the innovations of the nineteenth-century MSNS was the prisoner of war camp, with its twentiethcentury heirs, the concentration camp, and the gulag. Once the enemy class was rounded up, “enemy” individuals could be eliminated, or at least the scope of their activities seriously limited. In the totalitarian state, all individuals are inmates of a virtual prison, though some have more privileges than others. A prison can be a metaphor for the state in which it exists. North Korean émigré Kang Chol-Hwan described the gulag to which his family and relatives were condemned, as a quantitatively intensified deprivation of material comforts and liberty, compared to their former lives in Japan and subsequently in Kim IlSung’s DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) (Kang 2001). Only after abandoning their life of comfort and freedom in Japan to serve the Communist regime in North Korea, did they realize that they had chosen a downward spiralling imprisonment the moment they stepped off the ship onto DPRK soil. The prison was a metaphor of state values: In the work camp, which was a community of prisoners and guards, he noted the complex hierarchy that existed even among the prisoners – a hierarchy that coerced order in the camps.2 Nominal equality of prisoners was contradicted by tiny privileges accorded to some – especially those who collaborated with the guards. Liberty was virtually non-existent, with

Human security in individual human life

9

“education” and self-criticism sessions designed to suffocate whatever realm of free thought remained. The prisons of the state crushed compassion, even to family members: I saw fathers, released from the camps with their bodies broken and depleted, turned out of their children’s homes, hungry mouths with nothing left to give. Sometimes the fathers were left by the side of the road to die of hunger. Only their demise could bring any good, by clearing the way for the family’s possible rehabilitation. The system seemed specifically designed to stamp out the last vestiges of generosity. (Kang 2001: 143) He also described how “sexual relations were banned in Yodok prison because they threatened to give life to a further generation of counterrevolutionaries . . . people of undesirable origins should disappear, or at the very least be prevented from reproducing” (ibid.).

Individuals in extremis: the starting point for a theory of human security Examples of adventurers in life-threatening situations or prisoners living in a state-created hell suggest evidence of mind–body unity in individuals. Under extreme circumstances, the individual will to live is a powerful and decisive instinct. This will usually surfaces at extremes of the human condition. On a continuum of human security, genocide stands at one extreme, where the state has all power to destroy life (and often does), and the individual has none, having been stripped of all resources by terror, violence and intimidation. The other extreme is the lone individual in the state of raw nature, in full possession of endowed and achieved elements of self-protection. How does man in extremis survive in raw nature? Selected narratives describe men who directly face extinction in a societyless and stateless nature, and identify individual qualities and resources which enable men to overcome imminent death. From these stories, we derive the qualities and characteristics that we as humans either possess or can develop individually as human security inputs to prolong life in very difficult circumstances. The theory of human security will show that these individual human security inputs are channelled into cooperative relations (society) with other humans at the personal level, and projected into the state.3 Our first example is Aron Ralston, alone and dying in the Utah desert, who described his thoughts as he was immobilized by a rock that had unluckily pinned him inside a cave (Ralston 2004) – recalling family and friends, calculating how he might be rescued, video-recording his farewells, and estimating the rate and trajectory of slow death. Ultimately, only self-amputation freed him. This might seem to be an atypical case for human security, but illustrates man in extremis in a near-total natural environment – a next-to-null point of human security. His environment was less than completely natural since he carried advanced tools and

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equipment, plus knowledge garnered from years of strenuous and extreme outdoor adventuring. In addition, he had a character of confidence, coolness and courage that was formed by family and education, as well as seeking and confronting challenges in the past. In extremis, his human security resources – the physiological, material, and psychological tools to remain alive – were limited to his mind and body’s sweep. His personhood – bonds and relations with others – did nothing to activate rescue attempts, and he decided he would be dead by the time he was missed and a search effort could find him. Family and friends would grieve, but could do nothing for him in his immediate situation. His status as political actor and citizen also had no meaning in his entrapped condition. The rock-imprisoned Ralston was thus nearly pure individual – in those five days of entrapment he alone was responsible for his life, and so he made the painful choice of severing his arm so that the rest of his body could live. We can summarize his human security resources as the following: ● ● ●

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A powerful will to live; A strong body in excellent condition; A few tools, equipment, and some food, warmth, and water to slow starvation, hypothermia, and dehydration; Knowledge and experience that enabled him to calculate the consequences of whatever actions he undertook; and Judgment and fortune were largely negative to his individual human security – he had not notified anybody of his hiking plans, he dropped some of his last remaining water, he chose to hike alone and left no information on his route, and a huge rock fell on his arm just at the moment he was climbing.

From this, we derive a few general observations about an individual’s human security resources, prior to involvement of society and state. It is important to isolate these resources to avoid the error that human security is completely the responsibility of state and society. The Ralston narrative reinforces our contention that human security is primarily the responsibility of the individual, and that society and state are agents of augmentation – secondary responders, so to speak. ●

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His dilemma and solution verify a vivid life-force. The will to self-preservation is universal in all species. The phenomenon of suicides, always relatively rare, does not alter the overwhelming presence of the will to live. It is influenced by numerous factors, including subjective evaluation of human relationships, strength of character, religious beliefs, and degree of pain – which could cause a preference for death. Physical body. The body is the vessel for life, and there will be wide variation in the ability of the human body to endure stress and to extricate from a life-threatening situation. Even under conditions of extreme pain and duress, life will be preferable to death.

Human security in individual human life ●

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Tools. In an emergency, as Ralston discovered, much depends upon which tools are available within an arm’s reach of an immobilized body. Animals are observed to use tools, and some will even modify a tool to make it more effective. These skills can be passed on to younger animals as they observe adults using the implements. Humans invent, use, and modify tools with astonishing efficiency and variety. Many tools are highly effective in directly expediting human survival, and many more indirectly prolong human life. Knowledge and experience. Culture is a collective and cumulative response to man’s requirement to live in a portion of the earth’s environment. As societies increase in complexity, the division of labor becomes narrower in terms of skills. Ralston was trained as an engineer, but became an outdoor equipment salesman so he could devote his energy and time to his passion for wilderness sports. His education and experience helped him in calculating escape, but there was little help in that “mind-centered” background to help in his risky escape back through the desert, minus one arm. Knowledge of trapped animals that would gnaw off a limb to escape a trap provided the metaphor which affected his decision. Judgment and fortune. “Stay out of potential harm’s way” is perhaps the most effective maxim to prolong one’s life, and a corollary would be “stay away from things, people, and places where there is a probability of harm.” Yet people continue to settle and work in flood plains, on ocean shores, or in harsh climates. High risk is forced on people in desperate economic conditions who wager that disaster will not visit them in the foreseeable future. Ralston could have avoided his entrapment if he had pursued less adventurous diversions.

Individual survival – literary and cinematic examples The prisoner of the totalitarian state’s gulag lacks every fundamental liberty and opportunity for spontaneous action. His survival is at the whim of the state. At the opposite end of the spectrum of individual liberty is the adventurer or castaway, whose survival depends on his own strength, wit, and luck, with no immediate4 intervention or assistance from society or state. The notion of individuals as discrete units to be counted, classified, and analyzed is fundamental to modern social science as well as to the MSNS. The notion is also important as a point of departure for understanding collective (social and state) human security. But to understand how individuals contribute to their own security and survival is also critical to understanding of human security. A passive prisoner who has lost all hope may die without a whimper, while a free individual, also without hope, will fight to the last breath to survive. The individual as organism has other resources of security besides the genetic and the material. Faced with a choice of living or dying, individuals will choose life. When choice is removed, passivity and fatalism may result.

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Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders – individual and person The power of the will to live can be illustrated with narratives, drawn from fiction and fact. Thomas Hobbes examined natural man in the abstract and traced his sensations, emotions and logic as the source of the state and society, in a method that proceeds as if he were proving a theorem of geometry. His theory of the state remains a monument of rational plausibility, although based on the fiction that there was a collective rational decision to enter into civil society. Subsequent evolutionary and anthropological explanations have added further details on the formation of states and civil societies. Yet it was in literature where flesh has been added to Hobbes’ theory. Daniel Defoe (1660–1731), a prolific writer of popular fiction, may not have consciously set out to portray the various stages of Hobbesian man as plausible characters, but the result was clearly that. In Robinson Crusoe (1719), Defoe describes a man who saves himself from drowning and survives on a deserted island – the lone individual facing raw nature. Moll Flanders (1722) is a fictionalized, first-person account of a woman determined to become a lady, largely to escape the fate of most low-born men and women whose lives were at high risk. Unlike Crusoe, her adversarial/resource/opportunity environment was not raw nature, but British society. Where Crusoe lives as an individual, Flanders’ navigation through the pitfalls and opportunities of society marked her life as a person existing by grace of friends, lovers, husbands, relatives, and native intelligence. Her survival challenges were ameliorated by other people (society), in contrast to Crusoe’s material resources that provided for his existence and protection. A third Defoe work, the semi-novel A Journal of the Plague Year (1722), intimates yet another layer of human existence – citizen. He describes how people and institutions responded to the 1665 bubonic plague in London – a wide range of individual behavior that included extreme irrationality as well as impeccable prevention of further infection by individual and collective action. Protostate regulation and the self-sacrifice of upstanding local officials (although the monarchy remained distant and largely irrelevant) had some effect on mitigating the plague, although many individuals and families evaded controls to the detriment of others. In these three novels, Defoe addresses the three layers of human security modern man has accumulated for the protection of individual life.

Will to live, society, and state The “will to live” is the starting point for the human security of individuals. This “life force” has been explored most vividly in fiction. In the Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber, Black Jade recovers quickly from illness when she believes she will marry her childhood companion, Pao Yu, and then dies (losing the will to live, presumably) soon after discovering he is betrothed to another. A human security crisis occurs at those moments when an individual faces a life–death crisis and mobilizes all his resources to stay alive. Do men and women respond to these crises similarly? A further question to be explored is whether there is

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a “universal individual,” existing unbound by the dominant culture and environment. Are men and women similar in that core of humanity that corresponds to the “will to live?” Defoe hints they are, though he situates his protagonists in different environments that severely test their respective wills to survive – Crusoe in nature, Flanders in society, and Londoners in a matrix of state and society. Empirical evidence of life-force or determination to survive under overwhelming odds tends to be anecdotal. The survival of Arctic and Antarctic explorers under the most trying conditions, individuals who amputate a limb to survive (Ralston), concentration camp prisoners who survive disease, starvation, and brutality or other escapes from certain death relate how man overcomes extreme adversity, and raise the question of whether today’s urban-comforted denizens could rise to the task if similarly challenged. Western popular fiction thrives on this setting, and Robinson Crusoe, one of the most popular novels in the English language, is based on one man’s exile from state and social props of survival. It begins with a description of the life-force of one man. Crusoe’s throwback to a primeval environment sets his adventure, but starts with his seizure of life from certain death in the sinking ship. In a fateful moment, in the swirling currents and crashing debris, he fought to survive with every breath and heartbeat. After overcoming the shock of survival, he collects what he can from the shipwreck and uses accumulated skills and knowledge to enable a life that duplicates, in rough dimensions, that of a country gentleman except for human company. Crusoe provides a paradigmatic case of individual human security with these elements: ●

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Individual life force. He overcame a life-threatening crisis through a primitive human will to live, the good fortune of living when all shipmates had perished, and strength and wit to swim to safety; Knowledge. He utilized the accumulated knowledge of a lifetime – including winemaking – to adapt to his environment and survive; Economy. He took advantage of the materials he found on his island, including that which he salvaged from the ship, to build and furnish shelter, and to hunt and raise food; and Family. Although alone, his body was the legacy of his parents. Life was the gift from his mother and father, and their care enabled him to survive to adulthood, providing education along the way. Had he been flung on the island as an infant or adolescent, without parents or others to care for him, his chances of survival would have been nil. Although isolated in raw nature, he maintained his subjective membership in society by keeping a diary, marking a calendar, and otherwise preventing the evaporation of his personhood. With the arrival of the native he named Friday, he creates a new microsociety. Later, with other castaways, a more complex social network emerges. In the final pages, he even establishes a hierarchical state, thus compressing the evolution of human institutions into a person’s half lifetime.

In his picaresque novel, The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders (1722), Defoe describes a woman whose odds for survival, much less

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fortune and status, were low. Her ambitions to become a lady and to escape the high-risk circumstances of her birth (her mother was a condemned thief in Newgate Prison) were more than an aspiration to high status for its own sake. She was, as Defoe described her, during a life of continu’d Variety for Threescore Years, besides her Childhood, was Twelve Year a Whore, five times a Wife (whereof once to her own brother), Twelve Year a Thief, Eight Year a Transported Felon in Virginia, at last grew Rich, liv’d Honest and died a Penitent. (Defoe 1971: Title page) Hers was part morality tale and part portrayal of a woman determined to live her life as well and as long as possible – at nearly any price. In contrast to Robinson Crusoe’s defiance and adjustment to nature, Moll Flanders both defied and adjusted to society. Like so many in her station, she could have easily succumbed to a life that was nasty, British, and short. Deprived of decent family and escaping from gypsies, she was adopted by a gentry family, learned gentle arts, was seduced by one brother, and married another. Marriages ransomed her life and granted security while they lasted. In the first novel, knowledge of nature and intelligence enable Crusoe to facilitate his security of life. Moll Flanders uses her knowledge of men and women in society to secure her daily bread and status. Neither protagonist had much use for the state. Human security in cinema As we lay foundations for a human security theory starting from the level of the individual, we can summarize observations so far: ●

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The individual human organism has an overpowering “will to live” that enables him to overcome what may seem to be superhuman difficulties. Family is a primary incubator of individuals, and provides protection during the years he becomes a person, as well as the education which is the basis of survival knowledge.5 The individual requires physical inputs to maintain life – food, water, protection from elements, and so on, which are nature’s gifts, but require labor to acquire. Knowledge and the intelligence to apply it appropriately vary widely from individual to individual and according to immediate circumstance. In a social setting, formal and informal education diffuses knowledge to all persons having membership in that society and thus adds an important increment of human security to their existence.

We can illustrate a contemporary adaptation of Hobbesian human security in the state of nature with two American films. The Edge, written by playwright David Mamet, depicts four men flying and crashing into Alaskan mountain wilderness, killing the pilot. The remainder survive by their wits, what they carry

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in their pockets, and Charles Morse’s (the billionaire acted by Anthony Hopkins) lore of wilderness survival. Their nemesis is a huge grizzly bear, who symbolizes the “brutish” element in the state of nature. The bear kills the third man, leaving Hopkins and Robert Green, his younger friend (played byAlec Baldwin) to deal with the grizzly (Bart the Bear), and also find their way back to civilization. Similar to Robinson Crusoe, the two survivors must exist on what the environment offers, but unlike Defoe’s hero, Morse and Green face a much more dangerous nature – a gauntlet to run before they reach the safety of society. Their cooperative friendship (a fragment of society carried from civilization) allows them to pool their strengths and overcome their ursine adversary. Once the bear has been killed and their return to human habitation in sight, social/sexual/family conflict is no longer submerged by the necessity of cooperation, and Green plots to kill his friend to win Morse’s wife, with whom he has an ongoing affair. The older man outwits his rival, but hardly exults in victory, saving his own life and losing a friend whom he forgives. The two parts of the narrative – men in the state of nature, and then returning to the sexual rivalries of society – convey ● ●

Man’s struggle for individual survival and the value of cooperation. A parable of how, once the immediate struggle has been won, man has the luxury of social existence – with all its conflicts and cooperation. At the end of the story, Hopkins does not rebuke his supermodel wife, but only indicates he was aware of her affair with his friend – preferring domestic amity through implicit forgiveness to punishing her infidelity and destroying their marriage. Essentially, The Edge fuses Robinson Crusoe’s battle against nature and Moll Flanders’ sexual bonding as a strategy for survival – except that in the film, sexual bonding is a source of conflict between two men rather than cooperation when they reach “the edge” of civilization.

The film Cast Away is a modern-day variant of the Robinson Crusoe story. From the very title through the names of characters, it is rich in ironies. Tom Hanks stars as a FedEx executive trying to complete one last trans-Pacific assignment before Christmas. He excels in his profession because he is fixated on time-saving, the supreme virtue in his business. Leaving his fiancée (Helen Hunt), Hanks decides he can finish one last journey before the holidays. The plane crashes into the Pacific, and he fights for his life as the plane breaks up in pounding waves, echoing Crusoe’s initial crisis and separation from the lifesustaining vessel. He awakens on a beach surrounded by FedEx packages and has no idea where he is. He can survive until help arrives. Happy to be alive, he assembles the flotsam from the crash and awaits rescue – which never comes. He is forced to “cast away” his former life, and build a new one based on his rudimentary requirements for survival. Marking time for him is no longer a matter of minutes and seconds, but days, months, and years. No “Friday” appears, and in his loneliness and delirium, his bloody handprint on a surviving soccer ball (Wilson brand, and thus he

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names it “Wilson”) becomes another “person” with whom he carries on imaginary dialogues. Through supreme effort of will, he escapes the barrier reef that protected his island from storms and returns to his Memphis home. His fiancée, assuming the death of Hanks, has married another. His rescue was a resurrection, but he could not return to his former personhood, which had been “cast away.” Cast Away addressed the four elements of individual human security, and additionally brings the next level of protection – society, into focus. Hanks was stripped of his personhood by accidental exile to the island. Though not physically dead, he “dies” to the society that had contained him. A ritual funeral had been held in Memphis to provide closure to his life, and enabling fiancée Hunt to move on to a flesh-and-blood marriage. For Hanks [playfully named “Chuck Noland” (No-land)], his physical survival was not enough – his life demanded personhood, which he created by endowing the soccer ball with human qualities. His virtual society of two enabled him to maintain his relative psychological integrity in the years of isolation. On the island, he rediscovers arts of survival, forgotten in urban life and perhaps remembered from novels and Boy Scout training. Making a fire with friction between two pieces of wood is a major triumph for him. The contents of flotsam FedEx packages, including a pair of ice skates and video cassettes, are transformed into primitive tools and materials. Familiarity with the manufactured objects enables Hanks to put them to good use, reaffirming that previous sociomaterial experience is a component of individual knowledge. (By contrast, the Kalahari Bushmen in The Gods Must Be Crazy find an empty Coca-Cola bottle and regard it as a gift from the gods, and throw it off “the edge of the earth” as they know it, because it brought nothing but misfortune to their simple existence.) Where Robinson Crusoe found the “other” in Friday, Chuck Noland creates “other” out of a sports item. By this act, he restores a semblance of personhood to his existence. Hunt’s photo in a watch that no longer works exists as a reminder of his previous persona – a now idealized existence replaced by the immediacy of “friend” Wilson. Realizing the hopelessness of his situation, he considers suicide, but decides instead to build a raft to escape his isolated island. This high-risk venture is preferable to certain isolation and death. He observes and records the seasonal winds, storms and tides, and successfully navigates out of the lagoon that both sheltered and trapped him. Upon his return home after four years, he reclaims the personhood assumed by all to have terminated with the airplane disappearance. While Chuck the individual had survived, Chuck Noland the person had expired during his absence. The title itself is a play on “castaway” and provokes three interpretations. The first is the obvious reference to castaway – the conventional term for a shipwreck survivor, although the protagonist was a victim of an airplane crash. Second, we can interpret the space in the term to mean that society – that sector with which he interacted – had “cast away” Chuck with the formal funeral ritual, as had Helen through marriage to another and childbirth. Assuming he had physically died, society had cut the human bonds and healed the absence by adjusting existing bonds around the “wound” of his perceived death. Third, recognizing that

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central parts of his pre-crash personhood had been “cast away” by society, Chuck resigned himself to the loss of his former, other-defined personhood. At the end of the film, he stands at the intersection of two rural highways, poised to decide which new personhood he would pursue. At that moment, he completes the “casting away” of his old personhood that began the moment he climbed ashore the desert island, when he saved Chuck as individual, and started the unconscious creation of new personhood for himself. The single FedEx package he had not opened and treasured on his life-raft escape from the island contains a clue to his new personhood and, when delivered to the addressee, may reveal its contents. The film is conceptually important in its separation of human individual as physical and sentient organism from human personhood as social convention and artifice. It is a story where individual survival is due to circumstance, will, knowledge, and availability of a cooperative natural environment, ameliorated by plane crash detritus. As to the role of family, we can assume that Chuck was born of two parents, who protected him and nurtured him from infancy through or up to adulthood, or similar quasi-family protections. His store of knowledge and his ability to plan and calculate were vital in survival, including extremely painful self-surgery (with the blade of an ice skate) for a tooth problem. His escape was only possible through the same individual elements.6 Chinese lives: Wild Swans The “man in raw nature” genre of fiction did not seem to have had much currency in Chinese literature, perhaps partly because the concept of man has been so intimately linked to family and society, and partly because the notion of an individual cut off from humanity was not very interesting as a setting for narrative development. The Cartesian mathematics and Copernican astronomy that stimulated Hobbes to seek first principles in politics did not flourish in traditional China, and when introduced, hardly triggered a reexamination of man as self-contained individual. Man versus nature has been a major theme in Western literature. With the discovery of the Americas by Europe, and vast areas of relatively sparse population, human drama had an entirely new stage. Age-old questions of human nature and natural law could be investigated and tested in the new environment. Men confronted raw nature, “red in tooth and claw.” Each reader of adventure stories asked himself, “How would I react in those new situations?” The apparent non-existence of “man versus nature” adventure narratives in Chinese literary tradition is understandable in a society that was far more continentally oriented than maritime, and where human security threats came mostly in the form of social, economic, and political breakdown, or interruptions of food supply accompanied by or caused by natural disasters. Life without others and culture was practically unthinkable or at least uninteresting – even in fictional imagination. The attitude toward unmediated nature seems to be more Daoist – it was the edge of the cosmos, not the edge of civilization or the source of individual enlightenment. The response to raw nature was immersion, not engagement.

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China’s natural landscape was transformed by human activity millenia ago, and outmigration began in large numbers only in the nineteenth century. Overseas colonies, naval rivalries, and the prospect of wealth through overseas maritime trade were not prominent in China, depriving her literature of some of the context of European stories. In contrast to the individualistic subjectivism that saturates so many Western novels (James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, for example), social life provides the predominant context. A genre of contemporary Chinese literature addresses survival in the twentieth century – a period of war and revolution. As in many new nations, the central threat to human security comes from breakdown of the old order whose institutions had structured and restrained people into civilized society. The dissolution of the imperial Chinese state tempted foreign interventions, and saw the emergence of regional militarism. Survival of individuals required far more of Moll Flanders’ social pragmatism than Crusoe’s materialist ingenuity. Reliance on family solidarity has long been the key to human security in China, and its efficacy is illustrated in Jung Chang’s family narrative, Wild Swans. Her story addresses key elements of human security, spanning the crucial period when the modern Chinese nation-state was undergoing several transformations. The record of lives lived and the numerous challenges to individual human security are the subjects of Wild Swans. The central story is how her family, paralleling the fate of China itself, went from prosperity to ruin, and turbulently returned to a modicum of well-being. Narrated from a woman’s perspective, it illustrates the family element in human security. The Chinese individual is highly dependent on the social matrix, whose core axis is the lineage family. Even in one of the most famous of Chinese picaresque novels, Shuihuzhuan (All Men Are Brothers), the outlaw band is an ersatz family, and a number of the band have their status enhanced as descendants of historical heroes. The autonomous individual may be a Western invention, and the literature of individual survival gives him continuity of presence in our imagination. Wild Swans demonstrates how family has been the primary shield for human security in China, even to the extent of subordinating individual identity to lineage and consanguinity. There exists a near-fusion of individual and person, in the sense that family is not only a group according membership, but a primary focus of loyalty, identity, human security, and meaning throughout one’s life.7 The human security elements of the traditional family include: ●

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It is the primary agency of protection and socialization for infants and children; It is a primary economic unit, accumulating capital, owning land in common, and distributing inheritance; It induces solidarity when the state is weak and unable to carry out its security role adequately; It represses individuality in the name of collective identity, inducing a higher susceptibility to self-sacrifice; and It is the key link between individual and society.

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In the opening chapter of Wild Swans, the Qing Empire was in disarray, and state protections were practically inoperative. Human security reverted to fundamental institutions and behaviors which preserved individuals and those social relations which replenished the social matrix with new individuals. Her family narrative of late Qing, Republican, and Communist disorder illustrated the difficulties of survival in modern China. Among the remaining protections mentioned by the author were: ●

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The walled city design of so many Chinese towns was maintained to protect the population against warlord, bandit, nomad, and other predatory attacks. The Chinese ideograph for “country” or “state,” (guo ) consists of elements referring to wall, weapon, and mouth. By extension, these elements convey the fundamental aspects of the state: bordered and enclosed territory, means of defence, and people (literally, renkou, or “person mouth” is the Chinese term for population). Public order was maintained by armies and police, though during periods of a weak central state, competing military formations were often destructive to lives and property until one emerged victorious. Cities served economic and strategic functions. The author describes Yixian, a northeast market town and transportation junction marking the frontier of Beijing’s authority at the time of the new warlords. Often cities were havens of peace and order during dynastic dominance as administrative and economic centers, but in the inter-dynastic periods, they often became prizes and battlefields between contending forces. Families were the core of social organization, and marriage was the process of enhancing human security of individuals within the family. Sons had a much higher value, since only they could continue the family name, while women were often seen as little more than chattels for continuing the family line. Nonetheless, mothers and mothering were highly respected for their socializing and education roles. Women also tended to be enforcers of social mores. An old saying was that “Men take care of the outside, women manage inside (the family).” A wife might be several years older than the husband, and be responsible for part of his upbringing. Marriage was an arrangement between two families, and a duty of individuals.8 Confucian stress on education continued in modern China. The Confucian empire encouraged education in state-oriented Confucianism and was reinforced by social custom. Education was decidedly conducive to human security of persons. Under the empire, competitive examinations were the road to official position, which was a near-exclusive route to power, wealth, and status – not only for the examinee, but for his family as well. After the elimination of the imperial examinations in late Qing, new avenues of upward mobility were sought.

Other dynamics of society and human security emerge in Wild Swans: ●

Law did not have the same status and power in China as in the West. Confucian “rule by man” – rather than “rule by law” had the effect of making the word of the officials into a substitute for law.

20 ●

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Human security in individual human life Acquisition of power, or indirect protection under power, was the key to survival. A daughter could provide security benefits for a family if she married well, or became the concubine of a person with power. A successful son would also provide security for the family. Loyalty was key to solidifying these benefits. Bribery was a common direct action to purchase protection. Individual will was subordinated to family solidarity.

Preservation of strict order and hierarchy within households starkly contrasted with the disorder and conflict in Chinese society at large. Family provided some protection from the unpredictabilities of the outside world and was therefore a crucial institution of human security. Jung Chang relates how she and her parents served the Communist revolution, and suffered during Mao’s Great Leap Forward (GLF) and Cultural Revolution. State-building in China, at least since the Qin-Han era, has exhibited a “weak state/strong state” oscillation, giving rise to the characterization of a historical dynastic cycle. Both state phases and the periods of passage between them have contained massive threats to human security of Chinese citizens and subjects. In its weak or fragmented condition, the components of the Chinese state were in frequent – almost constant – conflict, with individuals paying the price in lives and treasure. As one hegemon emerged domestically, or intervened from outside, military force imposed unity. Only after the fragments of the old state were thoroughly defeated would a milder form of government normalize human security. Thus, periods of weak state as well as strong state formation have been highly detrimental to human security in Chinese history. The condition of weak sovereignty and the process of assembling sovereignty have precipitated much violence in China for over two millennia. Only the peace of an entrenched strong state has accompanied peace and order, though these were not absent during inter-dynastic interregna. In addition, periods of disunity, decentralized by definition, saw the generation, importation, and incorporation of new ideas, technology, and religions that enriched Chinese civilization and pushed each new dynasty to assimilate innovation, rather than to return completely to the last successful patterns – as ancient Egyptian dynasties had done.

The individual and human security Our selected narratives repeat a fundamental feature of human security: All men have a powerful urge to survive – a will to live – and most individuals will use every physical and mental resource to survive crisis and adversity. The ego exists within the corporal body. When the immediate life–crisis of survival is overcome, and basic physical needs accommodated, there is the ego need for “other.” These narratives demonstrate how individual humans are able to survive in difficult and life-threatening circumstances. But prior to the crisis in which the adult has even a slight chance to survive, the individual must have been formed. While this point

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may seem so basic as to seem redundant, it is vital in understanding the full panoply of human security at the individual level. The historic and universal pattern of human reproduction and production has been the family, based on malefemale bonding, intercourse, gestation, birth, infancy, adolescence, adulthood, old age, and death as the normal life cycle. The human adult individual, who is best equipped to survive traumatic crisis, is the “product” of primary inputs from mother and father, and secondary investment from others – most commonly close blood relatives. For this reason, family is a prior requirement of the individual in that it gives existence and human security during the most vulnerable parts of the life cycle, and is therefore a prerequisite to formation of an individual. A major difference between the iconic individual in the West, and the existentially less autonomous individual in China, is in this magnitude of family affiliation with ego in Chinese society. Based on the above exploration of individual survival, we can summarize a few elements in notation form. After family (which we will notate as [F]9) investment in an offspring, the immature individual is better prepared – physically and mentally – to undergo the trauma and challenges to life.10 In any life-threat narrative, the individual undergoes a traumatic experience where life is in balance, and existence is grasped from the jaws of death – expressing a raw individual will to live (notated as [Wi]). Then, using intelligence and knowledge [Ki], he assembles a plan for further survival, by calculating and exploring possibilities of food and shelter out of what the environment suggests and provides. This natural environment [Ei] provides the material things and conditions needed to ensure survival in the struggle for existence. [Ei] is the foundation of economy in the social setting. We have used fictional and biographical narratives of survival to isolate and postulate fundamental inputs of individual human security and to characterize the threats to human life in a pre-social and pre-state environment. Cast Away selfconsciously depicts the problematique of personhood and survival – a relatively pure pre-social – as well as post-social – condition, though the ego retains his social identity through memory and anticipation (materially expressed as the unopened FedEx package). Robinson Crusoe acquires new social identity with the arrival of Friday, and in The Edge, ego and other cooperate, and then engage in lethal contest on “the edge” of their reentry into normal society. In these narratives, the state did not play a significant role in security of the individuals depicted, although, like the preconditional family to produce them, the state was critical in establishing the infrastructure within which they lived and traveled. The ship that carried Robinson Crusoe was a creature of the British Empire. Chuck Noland’s company, FedEx, operates as a multinational corporation dependent upon the laws and protections of the states within which it operates, as well as the international air network operated by states. The billions owned by Morse in The Edge are his private property, which would vanish without protection of the state, and his air flight into the wilderness could not have occurred without a state umbrella of transportation and communication, technology and economy. Without the state, these individuals could not have been propelled into the situations where their human security was threatened by the stateless

22

Human security in individual human life

natural environment. Strictly speaking, they were citizens thrown back to a state of nature, equipped with considerable knowledge [Ki] to increase chances of individual survival. The narratives of Aron Ralston, Robinson Crusoe, Cast Away, and The Edge described situations where family-created, biological individuals confront a natural environment beyond the reach of the state.11 Given its contemporary ubiquity, should not the state be considered a fifth element in assessing individual human security? It can be argued that since the earliest establishment of states, men have sought protection in its laws and embrace, and even the recording of history was not possible until some sort of state existed. If correct, then postulating a fully developed, autonomous individual outside the state is not possible, for both the family and the state have been prerequisites to the emergence of the modern individuals who were the subjects of the narratives. However, the complexity of the state, its multifunctionality, its later emergence in human evolution, and its creation of a separate level of human existence (as citizen) require separate analytical treatment. The benefits of citizenship helped to sustain the subjects of the narratives but society and state did not directly contribute to immediate rescue, a human security task they performed as individuals. We can postulate a scale for individuals based on human security environments as follows, with the degree of available freedom as the dependent variable and the character of the state as the independent variable: 1 Natural Man. At one end of human security is the individual “cast away” from civil society, either voluntarily or by accident. He is post-Hobbesian in that he carries major elements of cultural skills and knowledge, derived from living in civil society within the boundaries of a state, as important parts of his cognitive framework. He has more freedom than normally possible in civil society, and his choices of action will focus almost exclusively on survival. Adventurers such as Ralston and Crusoe have undertaken risks for greater freedom, but found themselves trapped by the necessities of survival. 2 Democratic Man. Less free is the individual living in a democratic civil society, ruled lightly by the state. He must conform to laws and customs and economic necessities, and in return commonly enjoys the benefits of peace and material well-being. Aside from responsibilities of personhood and citizenship, he is free to pursue the economic, social, and leisure opportunities offered by his society. 3 Authoritarian Man. Life’s choices are more restricted by state and society. His movement and social mobility are more limited, and the priorities of his civil society may be determined by emergencies such as war, social disorder, religious dogmatism, or natural disaster. The state is more interventionist and restricting than in democracy, but somewhat less than in totalitarian regimes. 4 Totalitarian Man. The totalitarian state dominates civil society, and sets the priorities for all citizens, for the ostensible purpose of providing universal human security, or transforming society into one more conducive to equal distribution of protections. It accomplishes control over citizens by restricting

Human security in individual human life

23

choice and freedom, and taking control of all societal institutions, including the family. 5 Anarchy Man (post-state). Described in early chapters of Wild Swans, where civil order has collapsed, and civil society is rife with conflict, agencies of the state remain (police, military, and even bureaucracy) to carry out operations against “enemies of the state” but without legal authorization or accountability. Tribalism, regionalism, and religious conflicts tatter the social contract, and men form vigilante groups, or support local warlords for survival. Remnant fragments of the state – especially the military and rogue bureaucracy – become major threats to human security. These fragments endanger human security even more than the totalitarian state, since unrestrained conflict is more likely than in the ideologically-ordered state. Social units such as families and clans will generally have inferior protection against state fragments. 6 Prisoner Man. At the extreme end of the human security spectrum is the prisoner who may easily become the victim of state sanctioned execution or genocide. He is post-Hobbesian and has been betrayed by the state, which he cannot escape. He also possesses a culturally derived cognitive framework, but his range of possible actions is severely limited – the state and its agents have all power.12 The prisoner is isolated from civil society, especially in totalitarian states.13 Prisoners in democratic and moderately authoritarian states are not normally subjected to extreme deprivation or death or exile except under law. In summary, Natural Man lives outside the state and society, and takes responsibility for his own security. The challenges to survival are physical and nonsocial. Alone in nature, he has neither personhood nor citizenship to protect him. At the other extreme is Prisoner Man, who is completely subject to the state and its agents – be they jailers, police, or army. His security is delivered almost completely by the state, and can be terminated at its whim. Similar to Natural Man, he is nearly pure individual but completely subject to the state which has little interest in preserving his life except for its own needs. In between is a range of citizenships (excepting Anarchy Man) where the state has corresponding roles in providing protection. In this chapter we have identified the individual as the human biological unit of life, requiring human security for existence. We have suggested several elements that contribute to preservation of human life, drawing on several narratives about men and women in extremis. Man as individual exists in six environments identified above. Man alone in the state of raw nature is nearly pure individual, keeping in mind that his prior existence requires civil society and state to provide the personhood and citizenship he carries into the person-less environment. These considerations will be carried as elements in constructing a theory of human security.

3

The modern sovereign nation-state (MSNS)

One death is a tragedy, but a million deaths are a statistic. (Josef Stalin) The idea that a number of persons should exercise political rights in common simply because they happened to live within the same topographical limits was utterly strange and monstrous to primitive antiquity. (Sir Henry Maine (Teggart 1962: 269))

The role of states in human security What is human security? Philosophers have tried for centuries to define who we are. Alexander Pope’s message, “The proper study of mankind is man,” invites us to ask, what is man? Is he a biological creature, driven by appetites and fears for his survival? Is he a social creature, seeking safety and fulfillment in the embrace of collective existence? Or is he primarily a political animal, seeking power and domination at the expense of others? The present study postulates that he is comprised of all three, and his security consists of protections provided within these three layers of existence, which I term biological, social, and political. Man in the unit particular has built his essential humanity as individual (biological), person (social), and citizen (political) – each level of existence has an intrinsic set of protections which aggregate as “security.” We can perceive a fourth level of protection emerging in contemporary history, and its precursor was evident in great empires of the past. This fourth level of protection gives men a kind of global, or at least transnational, security. The Roman citizen, for example, could travel anywhere in the empire comfortable in knowledge that he enjoyed the protection of Rome’s law. Today, globalization promises similar transnational rights and protections, and is expressed in the growing body of international law and organizations. A minority is acquiring a self-defining status of “globizen,” meaning that their orientation transcends national concerns, and their protection is embedded in the new wave of internationalism. A fifth level of existence, giving moral and psychological (but not physical) security is spiritual or religious – the belief that human existence transcends the world of the material senses, and that we

The modern sovereign nation-state

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have a higher nature. We can call this level soul, though we must leave it to theologians to define. Not having direct relevance to individual security, we exclude it from human security consideration. The historical MSNS partially remedied the inadequacies of pre-political society that provided security to individuals only as persons, and also further integrated diverse parts of complex societies which emerge out of an increasing division of labor. The MSNS, the special form of state that has become the dominant mode of international relations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, emerged out of the evolution of Western European states from the Renaissance and has become the global standard for political organization. In the present age, it is the key political institution for human security and is rooted in individual and personal (social) needs for protection of life. The MSNS is an artifice created in response to the human condition and has become relatively homogeneous in form and function. It is not merely a legal, military, or economic construct. The MSNS also has a lethal side. Exclusive nationalism, for example, has stimulated genocide and other forms of discrimination, oppression, and horrors.1 Where the state has embraced radical equality, use of coercion has not only sought to repress individual achievement and difference, but has implemented state policies that eroded or removed prior props of human security. One such prop is the nuclear family, which has been in voluntary and intellectual decline in the West. Its role in human security has been weakened and partly replaced by the welfare state, affluence, secularism, and individualism. Violent death of the individual marks the ultimate human security failure, the null point indicating that all measures to protect a human life have failed at the unit level. Fundamentally, human security is knowledge and action to postpone inevitability that all particular life comes to an end. Each individual has powers to preserve his own life, and as Hobbes postulated, human reason and fear of death motivate men to create civil society and the state so that life can be happier and longer. The causes of death are many – homicides, wars, accidents, disease, or organ failure to name a few. Human prudence, conflict reduction, basic hygiene, and application of medical knowledge have done much to raise life expectancies. But deliberate human killing of other humans has also been a growth area in the twentieth century, though crime and war have always been part of humanity’s lot. Genocide is multiple homicide for ostensibly political reasons – usually justified in terms of national interests or state security. The Nuremburg Trials sought to criminalize genocide, and the modern International Criminal Court seeks to further enforce international law against the practice. Victims of genocide are mostly innocent of any crime and are only guilty of belonging to a targeted group. They are stripped of all means of resistance and face the full brunt of the state and its agents. They are naked of any means of human security, and except in a few cases, international intervention fails to rescue them. Genocide was a tragic fact of the twentieth century and nationalism a frequent motivation. The dark side of a human’s love for his country has been hatred of

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The modern sovereign nation-state

persons branded as aliens. The Turkish massacre of Armenians, German holocaust of Jews, gypsies, and Slavs, and the Rwandan bloody elimination of rival tribes are examples of perverse purification of national membership. Equally perverse has been malevolent government insouciance toward its own population – the great famines in the Soviet Union during collectivization, the mass starvation under Mao during and after the GLF, and recent deaths of two million in North Korea. Equally reprehensible has been deliberate government actions murdering its own citizens, as in the case of Saddam Hussein’s poison-gassing thousands of Kurds, or Syria’s mass murder in Hama, or the auto-genocide of one-seventh of the Cambodian population, or the Sudanese methodical elimination of Christians today. The perverse effect of sovereignty in less than civilized states is that their claim of absolute jurisdiction over citizens allows them to kill their own citizens with no accountability, since by definition, there is no higher authority than the state itself. The lofty sentiments of the UN charter often remain unenforced. Three remedies have been possible to reduce or avoid government-sanctioned genocide so far: democracy, economic growth, and outside military intervention. ●

●

●

Democracy and multi-party political systems based on law have the best records in the past century on genocide, though far from perfect. Liberal ideas and outlooks help to inoculate government and citizens against beliefs that wholesale slaughter will solve political questions. Their legal order, including enforcement and responsible courts, further ensure accountability. Economic growth provides hope and optimism, with human energy focused on material improvement. Under successful capitalist expansion, the rising tide raises many boats, and governments or social groups are less likely to scapegoat ethnic minorities for economic failure. Outside military force has also proven effective, although the costs are high and must be followed by long-term presence not only to prevent a resurgence of violence and vengeance, but also to transform a murderous regime into one that is peaceable. Defeat of Germany and Japan, followed by US occupation and restructuring, transformed them into advanced democracies. Without sustained remaking of an entire polity, permanent democracy is unlikely, as the United States is discovering in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The central paradox of modern human security is that its greatest threat has come from the modern state – the political entity whose putative function is to preserve and enhance the lives of citizens. State genocide has occurred largely in new states, anxious in their new sovereignty that external and internal enemies may threaten newfound independence, or determined to purify the country of “alien” elements. As a new state emerging in a hostile environment of other states seeks to preserve its existence and expand its power, it demands complete loyalty from its citizens. Those residents of state territory who may not share the core

The modern sovereign nation-state

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values or attributes, or are assumed not to share, are often prime targets for state violence to subdue or eliminate them.

Paradoxes of the modern state European political theorists and philosophers have sought to define the essence of the state for centuries. Hobbes interpreted it as a human artefact and imbued it with a human teleological calculation of men creating the sovereign state to remove themselves from the state of nature, and to protect them from each other by establishing a superior authority who alone could resort to force (Hösle 2004: 34). Hegel injected history into the state and reformulated it as the vehicle of human transformation toward harmony and peace. The MSNS should represent the most effective form of protecting humans from unnatural death and injury, and has become a major agency in postponing natural death – through education, public health, public safety enforcement, economic redistribution (that lifts the lowest sectors of a national population out of poverty and marginal human security), and the expanded welfare state. While progress has increased life expectancy through state organization of human security, it has also enhanced the efficiency of states and groups that wish to destroy lives. The horrors of two World Wars and assorted civil wars have also brought home the effectiveness of states and technology as killing machines. This suggests the paradox of the MSNS as both benefactor and malefactor to human security, contributor, and destroyer of human life. The Enlightenment celebrants of the sovereign state – from Hobbes through Bodin to Hegel – could not foresee that Leviathan unloosed would become so destructive. Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) formulated international law derived from natural law to facilitate peace and commerce, but realpolitik was rarely subordinated to his principles. Our age is one of accelerating dependence on the very state that has become the major threat to human security. Paradox one – the state as killing machine The central paradox of the state is that its killing abilities have increased as its scope and technology have been refined, while its ability to deliver goods and services to increase human security of its citizens has improved. Democracy, as a form of accountable government, has confined its killings abroad and intervened in an increasing number of sectors of human activity to advance security. Nondemocratic governments are less restrained in their targets of lethality, and imprison and execute their own citizens to retain power. They also claim to deliver equality and order, while subverting liberty, as well as material benefits. States are not equally lethal to their citizens. Communist and totalitarian states stand out as particularly egregious during their heyday. Democratic states, on the other hand, are effective in winning wars, and often by their enhanced killing power, most dangerous to their antagonists. Today, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, dictatorial, failing, or insecure states are the most liable to

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The modern sovereign nation-state

engage in massacre of their perceived internal enemies as well as pose a threat to neighbors. The paradox of the last century is that the MSNS, through war, genocide, and repression of opposition, has become a major agent to deliver violent deaths on a massive scale, while in the same time period, state-sponsored or state-encouraged technology and institutions have increased life expectancies and dramatically pushed back the thresholds of nonviolent death. Moreover, the lethal MSNS has also been the facilitating agent of the same technology and institutions that have brought many benefits to mankind. This paradox is mitigated when we acknowledge that incomplete or insecure states, where democracy is weak or absent, tend to be much more violent than those which are secure and sovereign and democratic, and deliver far fewer life-extending benefits to their populations. Partial resolution of this paradox may be found in the “life-cycle” of the MSNS. Simply, a mature and complete MSNS is unlikely to inflict genocide on its citizens, although its military sophistication may be highly destructive to its enemies. On the other hand, states that are aborning or dying often visit great violence upon their citizens. The optimum MSNS is stable and nonviolent. This MSNS paradox – state benefits and state terror – stands at the core of human security. The MSNS protects humans but also kills them efficiently. If the notion of a MSNS life cycle is valid, then global collective efforts must focus on: ●

● ●

protecting human life where states are collapsing or emerging, even where this requires intervention that violates state sovereignty; avoiding, preventing, and ending wars and conflicts; and transferring life-protecting and life-enhancing technology and institutions to incomplete states, in order to assist them to achieve state maturity (also known as “nation-building”).

Paradox two: the individual and the aggregate A second paradox is contained in Stalin’s epigram. A single death is a tragic loss to others whose lives were most directly affected by the existence of the deceased. It is the paradox of egoism (self-survival) versus altruism (negation of egoism). Economic, biological, and emotional resources are invested in every living person and the end of a life is a lost investment, so to speak. Even several linked lives – a fatal car crash of a family, for example, can be comprehended as multiple tragedy. At some undetermined threshold, the human mind transforms multiple tragedies into a generalized sorrow or regret. A million deaths are transformed from separate tragedies into a measured, and thus abstracted, million units of death. Body counts replace the intricate and intense emotional sympathy for living and breathing people who were victims of state lethality. Yet the average over 154,000 deaths2 that occur every day in the world remain abstractions.

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John Donne’s tolling bell3 sentiment links the individual sense of sorrow to the deaths of millions, but cannot be sustained with the same intensity that accompanies the demise of a loved one. The modern liberal sensibility perceives a necessary global trend toward equality and assumes it to be a paramount goal of “social justice” – both a vision and a criterion of human progress. For all the noble sentimentality of equal value of all human lives, the reality of individuality consists of three tiers of concern: ● ● ●

Self, or ego Immediate circle of loved ones All others, in descending order of acquaintance or relationship.

Humans are moved by altruism in varying degrees, and may give up their lives for the sake of others, even strangers, and so individualism and accompanying self-love are not absolute. What is the source of altruism? Once we reach the point in our lives when we are capable to look after ourselves, most live our lives as egoists, and depend primarily upon our individual resources for personal survival. Infants and children are most vulnerable, and depend upon parents for basic sustenance. This period of dependency forms the universal experience of bonding, and establishing interpersonal ties. If humans were left to their own devices shortly after birth, like baby alligators emerging from their eggs, the species would have long expired. But more importantly, the period of dependency establishes the existence of “other” in the life cycle of the ego, and creates an identity we call personhood. The individual ego inhabits the multiple roles of the person, which in turn cultivates obligations, privileges, and responsibilities that aggregate as “society.” Altruism is a clear expression of the ego’s acceptance of mutual dependency on “others.” Human security is defined as “safety of individuals.” It means protecting individuals from injury and death, and by extension, freeing individuals from constant anxiety over accidental or purposeful harm, with the result that human energy can be expended in more productive directions. Who provides human security? The first line of security is the individual ego – it alone responds immediately to pain and threat. It alone possesses the will and knowledge to suppress acquiescent sentiments in the face of danger. The second line is the social matrix of the individual as person – his family, neighbors, friends, colleagues, and fellow humans. Third is the state – those agencies which have the legal and moral mission to protect the citizen – based on implicit or explicit contract. Human security is the implicit policy of all states, though with little overt concern over unique and particular individuals. Every individual is special, and states usually make policy and law only for general categories. It is left to each individual to provide primary security for himself, to join with others for secondary (social) security, while the state should provide tertiary security from general threats.

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Paradox three: safety versus liberty Human security activity seeks greater safety for the individual, and the MSNS has made significant contributions in this endeavor. Membership in the state and access to its benefits as citizen require surrender of some freedom, as Hobbes rightly observed. The modern welfare state has increased the human security of individuals, but at the cost of individual freedom of self-protection. This form of the MSNS intervenes in family affairs and controls access to weapons of selfdefense for the benefit of improving human security of citizens, but at the expense of individual liberty. The MSNS also claims authority over the individual’s life and material resources in the name of national security (partly to feed the warfare state) – claiming that the existence and well-being of individuals require sacrifice for collective security. Taxation and conscription (including historical forms of corvée) have long been a primary nexus of contact between the state and individual. Human security, in contrast to national security, starts from the individual. It is possible to quantify human security by measuring aggregate null points (i.e. deaths) in the form of longevity and death rate figures. But this does not measure the full range of human characteristics that comprise real individuals. For purposes of human security, there are only two conditions that matter – safe or unsafe. Safe means “life-preserving” and does not require comfort or happiness. Safety of an individual requires a minimum of liberty so that his will to survive can operate independently of imposed conditions. Unsafe is the condition of individual life where violent injury or death is more likely. The incidence of violent death or injury is a negative measure of human security. Democratic forms of government carry a form of moral hazard4 in giving citizens access to achieving wants as well as needs. Sophisticated and full-time activism can also exert amplified influence on government to the detriment of an unfocused majority, diverting tax revenues to special interest benefits, for example. Government confiscation of property – whether outright nationalization or incrementally through taxation – is a Hobbesian reduction of liberty. Aggrandizement of the state at the expense of individuals’ rights over property has been acceptable when done in moderation, or temporarily during national emergency, but may become a temptation for governments to take property because it has expanding needs and has the power to engage in takings.5 As modern mankind experiences injuries and benefits from the state, some parties seek to supersede it with a larger, transnational political entity, while others are dedicated to containing its power and making it work positively for human security. A third persuasion sees the nation-state as the key agent of security which subordinates other considerations to national interest and national security. A fourth group – terrorists being the extreme expression – fight and die to weaken and destroy the MSNS. Islamic extremists consider the materialist and secular state an obscenity, and battle to restore theocratic authority to the successor states of the Ottoman Empire. Each persuasion seeks to resolve the state’s paradox in its own way.

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General characteristics of the MSNS The fundamental characteristics of the MSNS are: ●

●

●

●

Sovereignty remains at the center, what Bodin called the absolute power of the state. Sovereignty defines the scope of state power. The state requires territory with adjoining waters as extensions of national territory. A population occupying the state’s territory is a prerequisite to the state, and if they have a bonding identity, or better still, obligation and allegiance to the state, we call those people a nation. The state must have a government to make and enforce laws, embody the symbols of identity, protect its citizens/subjects from harm, and mobilize resources to protect and carry out defense of the state.

What distinguishes the traditional state from the modern is that the latter has made sovereignty the sine qua non of its existence and authority, and has insisted on encompassing its population as an identifiable nation within precisely demarcated boundaries. Traditional states, in contrast, were more laissez-faire about allegiance of the general population, as long as power and office holders supported the central government. The MSNS evolved over several centuries in Western Europe and was propagated by war and colonization so that today, nearly all the lands and much of the water of the globe are subject to the sovereignty of one or another of existing states. The MSNS also occupies a preeminent position in modern thinking about how the world should be organized. Intelligent persons differ on perceptions of the state – is it fact, impediment, or ideal? ●

●

As a fact of modern political existence. States are the exclusive domains of public activity, setting the parameters of public policy, monopolizing force, settling international disputes, controlling the main levers of welfare, and managing behavior through law, taxation, and regulation. For many countries, full sovereignty remains unfulfilled. But regardless of its particular stage of development, the MSNS exists globally and provides a basis of political order. It can be modified and improved, but to change it radically into a super-federation – as is being attempted in Europe – is an experiment whose consequences are unknown. As an impediment or stepping-stone to global peace and prosperity. Rooted in the human condition, the state cannot be eliminated. But this instrumentalist persuasion hopes that states can be subordinated to international/ transnational organizations and international law. Two examples are the Kyoto Protocols on Global Warming and the International Criminal Court, which the United States most prominently has refused to approve in the name of protecting its sovereignty. The integration of European nation-states under the European Union is an experiment to move beyond the MSNS to

32

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The modern sovereign nation-state subordinate it to transnational order, by building a new sovereignty consisting of fragments of the old, in order to check and balance the super-power sovereignty of the United States. Globalists see the state remaining fundamentally flawed. It is often unable to restrain non-state global actors (terrorists, international corporations, hegemonic states), maintains an inequitable distribution of wealth, and facilitates wars as instruments of national policy. For this persuasion, the functions and form of the state are obstacles to human development, and must be replaced by new forms. Finally, the MSNS exists as an ideal to be achieved by new nations. Especially those which emerged after World War II: Many remain beset with developmental problems, and others exist with what they consider territorial incompleteness. In East Asia, China considers Taiwan as irredentum, and Japan demands return of the Northern Territories from Russia. Korea is split into two halves and remains in a condition of stalemated war since 1953. Industrialization and prosperity remain significantly lower in many of the new nations than in the mature MSNS. For those who belong to an incomplete MSNS, achieving the same levels of sovereignty and well-being is the requirement that must be met before there can be action to move beyond the modern state. For them, the benefits of the MSNS are obvious, and the structures need not be reinvented, only adapted. Japan was successful at state-building in the late nineteenth century, and both Taiwan and South Korea, though more fragments of states than whole, have demonstrated that a modified sovereignty and prosperity as semi-states is attainable and workable, though theoretically vulnerable to conflict and instability. China is the major case in East Asia where the complete MSNS remains a desired ideal.

Knowledge and the state All social and political knowledge is cumulative, though there are breakthroughs and innovations by individuals. An example of applied knowledge that accelerated the power of the state is Alfred Nobel’s invention of dynamite – a product of accumulated chemistry and physics knowledge – which hastened building of roads, canals, and railways during the age of industrialization, and also made modern bombs far more lethal than earlier versions.6 Although Chinese had invented gunpowder, there had been relatively little further development. In Europe, it was initially used for war, and later for blasting in construction. Through experimentation – often with frightful consequences – guncotton and nitroglycerine were developed, and after many difficulties Nobel developed a number of stable and manageable explosive devices. One could hardly imagine a similar train of events in China or any other precapitalist society leading to a highly profitable and productive invention. Nobel’s accomplishment required vision, a network of scientific information, persistence, and the prospect of financial payoff. A relatively noninterventionist state also helped by permitting the inventor to proceed with experiments although his laboratories and factories would hardly meet safety standards in today’s industrial world. This character of knowledge, the role of individual as its agent and creator, and its socioeconomic context point to issues

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of how, in the West, individuals/persons have shaped the nature of the MSNS. Nobel’s technical success also illustrates the role of knowledge in the aggrandizement of the MSNS. Role of state constitutions Each MSNS has its constitution – usually written, and occasionally unwritten. States vary greatly in their fidelity to their constitutions, and blatant inattention or even betrayal is not uncommon – especially in nondemocratic polities where loyal opposition parties and regular elections that strengthen accountability are weak or absent. A constitution can be a useful guide to government structure, the values of the nation, and the relationship between state and citizen, but it cannot express the full or actual range of powers of a state. A constitution provides an important source of law for the state, but more importantly, is an expression of sovereignty – the claim of a government to rule a people and a territory to the exclusion of all other states. It is a rare constitution that describes the reality of sovereignty – the actual affairs in a state. We can bifurcate the concept into claimed sovereignty [Sc] and actualized sovereignty [Sa]. The written constitution refers largely to claimed sovereignty and customarily addresses the valued ends of the state in a preamble, the structure of government, the rights and duties of citizens, and a method of amendment. By stipulating regular and legal relations between state and citizens, a liberal constitution establishes claims to political order, legal equality, and human liberty. Various treaties and laws will explicitly define the territory of a state in relation to other states. Constitutions are subject to change, and are rewritten or amended. When they do not respond to major change, tensions emerge that reflect the distance between claimed sovereignty and actualized sovereignty. Concept of meta-constitution Prior to the MSNS, something akin to modern constitutions informed the claims, patterns, customs, and practices of states and their governments. Usually framed in religious terms and operationalized in practice with rudimentary administrative staff, military establishment, frontier garrisons, and monarchy, premodern states exercised sovereignty over subjects often through the intermediary of society, rather than directly as citizens. Feudal monarchies ruled Western Europe for centuries before revolution and war replaced them with republics. Imperial China followed a consistent pattern of dynastic monarchy, with Confucianism functioning as state religion, and was fairly successful and consistent until the end of the nineteenth century. Except for dynastic Egypt of the pharaohs, there was no political system of similar longevity in history. Conceptually, modern constitutions are contracts between the state and its citizens, in which the former promises security and other values, while the latter implicitly pledges obedience to its laws. This contractual concept did not exist in traditional states, and so we must resort to coining a term that will describe and encompass the constitutions of states that had no explicit

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The modern sovereign nation-state

constitution, as well as the assumptions and implicit ideology of modern constitutional states – “meta-constitution.” We define a meta-constitution as a pattern of institutions and values which encompass the state’s claims to sovereignty over people and territory, and which energize government and its agencies to exert coercive power over its claimed dominion. Though necessarily vaguer than constitution, this notion has analytical value in identifying at least eight state-forms in China from the Qin dynasty onwards. A meta-constitution is based on an array of three values – order, equality, and liberty, whose relative importance determines the character of a state. The meta-constitution also has a core of esoteric political knowledge [Pk] generally developed by a few theorists and philosophers from the raw material of experience and history, and translated into action by leaders and statesmen. Societally accepted ethical norms can form the basis of a state, and longevity of a meta-constitution is reinforced by harmonization with universal ethical norms. Hobbes’ Second Law of Nature, for example, was based directly on the Christian Golden Rule: That a man he willing, when others are so too, as farre-forth, as for Peace, and defence of himselfe he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himselfe . . . this is the Law of the Gospell: Whatsoever you require that others should do to you, that do ye to them. (Hobbes 1651: 95) Hobbes extracted Christian principles from the sovereign state, and gave it a sounder moral basis, so that men could be obedient to secular powers and have confidence they were also following their religious beliefs and ethical imperatives. In searching for the source of longevity of the Chinese imperial state, one can also discover its claimed conformity to moral and religious principles – chiefly derived from the cult of ancestors and filial piety. The longevity of the MSNS and imperial state is related to their justification in long-practiced moral patterns of their respective societies. In contrast, the short-lived meta-constitutions of the Chinese Legalists (QLS1) and Maoists (MCS6) were chiefly artificial constructs aimed at radical social engineering, and were transitionally successful in injuring or shattering existent states and antagonistic to mainstream states. Both were also successful (at high human cost) in enforcing actualized sovereignty through terror and intimidation. In the West, fascist and the major communist states have vanished, as did the French Reign of Terror before them. No meta-constitution is eternal, but some have greater staying power than others.

The state as primary modern link between individual and human security For modern China, as with many new and developing states, the MSNS is both fact and ideal, and less an impediment to larger human goals of peace and justice. Delayed development has stimulated the Chinese appetite to take their place

The modern sovereign nation-state

35

among advanced countries of the world, and a complete state-form is the preferred vehicle of that consummation. The MSNS gives political form and cohesion to the combination of society and territory, with the added dimension of sovereignty. Protection of individuals/persons as citizens is both a motivation for and the result of full MSNS status. Society alone, without the concentration of power that distinguishes the state, cannot offer as much protection to its member citizens – especially when endangered by states which have concentrated power and are able to pillage or intimidate less organized peoples. How can we link the individual’s search for security to the MSNS? Hobbes provided an allegory of why the individual traded some basic liberty for security, but could not envision that extreme modern states would demand all liberty from their citizens in return for protection. In moderate authoritarian and democratic states, the notion of national security claims a degree of sacrifice from their citizens, in the form of controls, taxation and conscription – a surrender of liberties nonetheless. In theory, democratic states are accountable and have limitations on their power, even in emergencies.7 The security function of the MSNS – protection of individuals Protection of the individual as citizen is the fundamental function of the state, and its modern manifestation – the mature MSNS – has fulfilled this function. The traditional Chinese state was also successful in meeting this human security criterion for over twenty-one centuries, with varying effectiveness. The MSNS, based on the theoretical and legal equality of citizens, has not been humanity’s only viable model of the state. In the long transformation of the traditional Chinese state into its modern (and still incomplete) successor, it is clear that the global spread and domination of the MSNS require all societies to conform to those specifications. This was not done by fiat, but through war, colonization and imposition of a global “standard of civilization” (Gong 1984). The MSNS has often been as “red in tooth and claw” as the state of nature itself, and old states that challenged new ones were eliminated without mercy. Only conformity to the demands and institutions of the MSNS insures modern sovereignty, and integration of its organizational forms consolidates the political and military strength to preserve sovereignty. As the experience of the Guomindang Chinese Republic (GRS4) demonstrated, adapting the form of the MSNS, without having massive material, territorial, and military substance, could not prevent defeat by the Japanese state, and later by the Communists. For the post-1949 People’s Republic of China (SCS5), the Soviet state model offered direct passage to MSNS-status, but was eclipsed by Mao’s MCS6, and replaced after Mao’s death with the DMS7. Should China remain at peace with the world and her neighbours, and sustain her economic growth, prospects for attaining the material and substantial benefits of the MSNS are likely. Full sovereignty will depend on the fate of Taiwan – the healthy remnant of the Nationalist Republic established in 1928. The eight meta-constitutions of China from 221 BC–AD 2006 have been listed in Table 3.1. In this modern age, we have solved many of the survival challenges that confronted and defeated our ancestors. We see nature as benign and needing

36

The modern sovereign nation-state Table 3.1 China’s eight meta-constitutions, 221 BC–AD 2006 Qin Legalist State (221–206 BC) Imperial Confucian State (206 BC–AD 1911) Republican Nation State (1911–27) Guomindang Republican State (1928–present) Stalinist Communist State (1949–56) Maoist Communist State (1956–76) Dengist Market State (1979–present) Taiwan Independent State (1949–present)

QLS1 ICS2 RNS3 GRS4 SCS5 MCS6 DMS7 TIS8

protection, while our forebears saw nature as far more a threat to their existence, needing conquest to survive. Today we have the extensive and powerful state delivering many of the benefits that contribute to survival as well as longevity, health, education, and prosperity that evaded most of our forebears. The state and history History is a tool to understand and clarify actions and their consequences. Teggart stressed the tension between analyzing the elements history and the demand for narrative as its sole end. History, in its widest sense, means all that has happened in the past, and, more particularly, all that has happened to the human race. Now, the whole body of historical students is in possession of a vast accumulation of information in regard to the former activities and experiences of mankind, and the problem which is uppermost at the present time is how this accumulated information – which already far exceeds the possibility of statement in any narrative synthesis – may be utilized to throw light upon the difficulties that confront mankind. (Teggart 1916: 34–5) As narrative, the only complete human history would be the total replication of every experience of every human who ever lived. And if this complete history were ever assembled, it would become part of some human’s experience, requiring holistic inclusion in their experiences. Such a complete history could never be finished, and would require an infinite number of universes. So perfect history may be similar to a closed loop in a computer program – never achieving closure. The practical question is how far we can go in dipping into history to understand its “processes” without fatally distorting the narrative. Arnold Toynbee, Otto Spengler, Hegel, Marx, and practically all founders of the modern social sciences based their hypotheses and observations on imperfect historical narratives, often selecting what suited their theory and discarding the rest.

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Linking the individual to the state The major conceptual hurdle to be overcome in linking the living, thinking, working, and life-preserving individual and the political institutions which mankind has inherited from past ages is that each modern human unit (individual ) is radically subjective in views and actions regarding his life, while our social, economic and political institutions require negation of egoistic particularism. (This very word “particular,” derived from the root “particle,” accurately evokes the occasional social science tendency in homogenizing, or at least abstracting, human qualities from sets of persons.) To build a theory of human security, we examine man in three levels of existence: individual, person, and citizen. (“Economic man” is a subset of person as producer and consumer, in his necessary relations with other producers and consumers.) Earlier (Chapter 2), we referred to narratives of men surviving in wilderness, without benefit of collective security institutions. In the Western tradition, there has been abundant inquiry and interest in the individual as hero, artist, and revolutionary – more commonly than in Chinese culture. Setting the individual against raw nature has been not only a portal to adventure, but to reflection on man’s character and his place in the cosmos. In the later part of the twentieth century, with industrialization and communism, China has turned the natural environment into an arena of struggle – albeit collectively rather than individually. This East–West difference is also reflected in the institutions of human security – particularly the family and the state. The MSNS evolved as the paramount structure of human security in Western Europe and became the standard for a defined political community to gain membership as a participant in the global system. Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan demonstrated how the sovereign state could have been established by individual humans using their faculties of reason and language. This rational foundation was based on the fiction of men contracting to accept the laws of a sovereign power, and thus ending the dangerous state of nature among men. Cooperative relations among men also enabled them to collaborate and cooperate in generating knowledge, enterprises, and projects that were cumulative and collective in order to overcome the limitations of isolated individuals or groups eking a living from a hostile natural environment.

The state and human security in China Many preindustrial societies had state characteristics – political affiliation based on territorial domicile and government claiming exclusive jurisdiction over that territory and identifiable subjects. Furthermore, these states and proto-states could be characterized as having implicit social contracts in that they provided security to subjects in return for supports in the form of loyalty, service, and resources. China’s state system was unified, highly developed and sophisticated from at least the third century BC. The Qin-Han model of the Chinese state persisted until 1911, when it collapsed and was replaced by a series of incomplete republics

38

The modern sovereign nation-state

until 1949, when the Communists established the current People’s Republic (also incomplete). The legacy of state development in twentieth-century China can be summarized in human security terms: ●

●

●

●

●

●

Twentieth-century China had a historical legacy of the traditional imperial state (QLS1 and ICS2 – 221 BC–AD 1911), which had provided relatively advanced protection for the lives of its subjects, though there was a cyclical dynamic that saw periods of dynastic weakness and collapse. A state sponsored ideology, Confucianism, characterized periods of peace and prosperity, with stability valued above all. The interim periods between dynasties permitted new religions, such as Buddhism to penetrate society and influence official thinking, while still preserving intellectual and social Confucianism. A core principle of imperial Chinese political knowledge [Kp] was the nurture and preservation of the consanguineous family. During the classic period of imperial state, the family was continuous and consistent in providing human security to persons. An idealized model of family provided the basis of the imperial state and through the examination system, supplied not only personnel but reinforced the norms of education, loyalty, and hierarchy to the emperor, whose own position was embedded in dynastic and familial ancestry. Although imperial dynasties collapsed periodically, new dynasties emerged to consolidate the state – until the late nineteenth century when the industrializing and competing states of the West reduced China to what revolutionaries termed a “semi-colony.” It became apparent that the old imperial state could no longer serve its two-millennia role. In the first half of the twentieth century, hundreds of millions of individuals in China were vulnerable to threats of life and possession. As before, the structure of family provided some protection, but there was little prospect of higher level security from a revived dynastic state. Japanese mastery of the creative and destructive powers of the MSNS combined with its drive to acquire external resources and territory at China’s expense. During this time of troubles, Chinese looked outside its borders for state models to emulate.8 Through the agency of Western European commercial and military expansion, as well as imposing legalistic treaties, Chinese government was intimidated to reorganize as a MSNS. Political intellectuals recognized the strength of the Western model, and advocated a Republic as the appropriate form of government which would permit participation as an equal in international politics. This would end the subordinate status of China and terminate the “unequal treaties” as the Japanese had done by 1900. More importantly, from the perspective of human security, the Chinese people had to be transformed from subjects into citizens – empowered individuals who could strengthen the state by combining their individual wills into a general will as Rousseau had written. The breakdown of the European state system in the war (1914–18) tarnished the desirability of imitating Western states. The Japanese annexation of

The modern sovereign nation-state

●

●

39

Korea and increasing threats to China further exposed the Western-derived MSNS as an aggressive war machine to many political intellectuals. The Russian revolution gave birth to a new type of state and inspired the Communist movement in China for a Soviet-type state. Both Republicanism, in its present form in Taiwan today, and Communism, ruling the mainland, have claimed to be the best custodians of human security in China. Following implementation of reforms since 1978, Beijing’s claims have become more credible, although a much higher living standard and degree of political and economic liberty in Taiwan sets a high goal yet to be achieved. As mentioned earlier, twenty-two centuries of the Chinese state witnessed at least eight different meta-constitutions, with three of them existing simultaneously at present. We will expand these observations in subsequent chapters, after further exploration of state dynamics and specification of human security theory.

State and family in traditional China A major China–Western dichotomy in addressing human security has been a relative difference in emphasis on personhood and family – a difference which has affected the evolution of respective state form. In China, personhood has long been fused with familial membership, while the Western tradition has been more conducive to greater autonomy of persons – an autonomy reflected in rights, social mobility, individualism, and institutions such as marriage and contract. Western liberal thought and the MSNS developed in relative simultaneity, transforming the individual/person into citizen, and reorienting loyalty from family, church, class, and locale to the nation. A core element in building the MSNS was political knowledge that personal affection could be redirected from self and one’s personal circle of relations, friends and associates to the larger entity of nation through political participation, while retaining the moral spirit of Christian ethics. War proved to be an effective catalyst in this redirection, and the tribal, dynastic and national wars of post-Renaissance Europe accompanied and hastened the emergence of exclusive patriotism and linguistic nations. Nationalism convinced men that they would protect their primary circle of family and friends by joining in the national cause – including war. Modern politics bridges the gap between persons and the state by creating an affective relationship that potentially supersedes social bonds. Family has been critically important in the human security of individuals/ persons in pre-political societies and remained central in the ICS2 moral order. In Western political thought, family has been relegated to a secondary role as individuation into citizenship has progressed. When familistic feudalism dominated the political realm in medieval Europe, the Church was haven to those seeking escape from the confines of family authority. Indulgent priests gave marriage blessings even when forbidden by parents (as in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet). Convents and monasteries proliferated as sanctuaries from familistic dominance. (A similar phenomenon occurred in China with Buddhist orders, but imperial confiscations limited their long-term effects.)

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The modern sovereign nation-state

The liberal political tradition of the West oriented persons away from family and into the public sphere. “Republic” comes from the Latin, res publica – “public thing.” Contrast this with the Chinese term for state guojia – literally state family. When Hobbes first mentions “family” as a form of government in his Leviathan, it is tellingly rooted in “lust,”9 and thus a lower order of emotions than the use of reason to establish a commonwealth. For him, valid protection for all men can only come from the formation of a sovereign – artificial man authorized by individual members of society. Although describing “savage people,” he reflects a Western intellectual tradition of seeing the family as reflective of partial, or selfish, interests. Aristotle also considered the family to be the realm of the private, in contrast to the polis which was the realm of the public and therefore superior. The MSNS is heir and beneficiary of this anti-family tradition, influenced by the gradual denial of hereditary feudal familism which governed Europe for centuries, and by its revolutionary elimination in France. The modern corporation – another form of artificial person – equally runs afoul of anti-feudal liberalism, since many of the largest were founded and run as family firms. Marx and Engels described the bourgeois family as a mainstay of capitalist society, with chattelization of children and wives as property. Modern feminist and homosexual movements attack the traditional family as repressive and demand radical redefinition. In modern secular society, the family is seen under siege on a wide range of fronts (Gairdner 1992). Some of this antipathy is a consequence of the Western tendency to individuation – including personal responsibility, the Christian concept of immortal soul, and natural rights. But new critiques of the family also come from those advocating group rights and claiming that traditional husband–wife roles are demeaning to women, and offend other sexual orientations. Given this history of anti-familism in the West and the diminishing role of marriage and family, it is not surprising that secular and individualist liberalism today may well tolerate the traditional family as a practical form of association, but do not accord it any prominent role in the state. The higher reverence for family in China has been central to the formation of the state. Confucianism regarded it as the critical link between individual and society, the first school of learning, and the model for government. Family gave personhood to the individual. Confucians believed the family to be a natural phenomenon, on a par with Hobbes’ state of nature. But the family was also an unchangeable part of the cosmos whose regulation and well-being was the key to peace and stability in the world. Instead of a Hobbesian social contract that enabled men to transform the state of nature into a peaceable kingdom, the Confucian view was that the family was a natural association that cultivated and improved man’s best qualities. It reflected and influenced the hierarchy of society, and was the cradle of learning and individual virtue. The individual/person owed existence and security primarily to the family, and this centrality created the penumbra of filial piety that suffused state and society through much of Chinese history. Confucianism was the vital link between human security and the state – and can be considered to be China’s imperial meta-constitution, abandoned in 1911.

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The strength and durability of China’s second meta-constitution (Qin was the first) was in the congruence between human security and state security. The Confucian state rested on a foundation of individuals in their capacity of family members – not as discrete individuals. From the perspective of Confucianism, individuals had security of life and person only as parents and children, not as autonomous individuals. The major difference between the meta-constitutions of traditional and modern China is that the Confucian state was based on the familistic structure of Chinese society which incorporated the pre-state values and institutions of moderately successful human security. The two modern constitutions – Republican and Communist – on the other hand, modelled themselves after contemporary successes of state-building, including Japan, the Soviet Union, and Prussia. National sovereignty and national security, rather than human security, have been the central objectives of modern Chinese nation-state forms, although human security has also benefited from this emphasis. The nearest correlation to national security in traditional China was dynastic security, but the latter was not indispensable to the former. A weak or ineffective dynasty could be destructive to imperial security. Support for a dynasty depended upon its ability to maintain the family virtues that reinforced human security at the family level. In the West, the individual/person is depicted as morally and legally autonomous in liberal society. A traditional Chinese view was that there was something unnatural to man alienated from his family roots. These roots could not be cut any more than a tree could live after severance from its roots by the woodsman’s axe. Both imperial and republican China recognized that these family roots are intrinsic to human security of persons, while Communism (SCS5 and MCS6), in trying to build a MSNS, saw the family as enemy to that project. Today there is greater tolerance – and even encouragement – for traditional “family values” in DMS7 as long as there is no return to what have been considered “feudal values” – subordination of women, legal autonomy from the centralized state, and excessive accumulation of wealth and power outside the reach of the Communist Party. The SCS5 and MCS6 ambitious expansion of the state’s role in education, economy, social affairs, land and property regulation, marriage, inheritance, and other matters through law also adumbrated the influence of the traditional family in contemporary China. Maoist violent repression of family life in the Land Reforms, GLF and Cultural Revolution, through mutual surveillance and denunciation, and the commune system, delivered major blows and mandated that the party-state – not family – was the only legitimate object of loyalty. As the regulatory competence of the Communist state expanded, the ancient protective shells of family weakened further. Today, legal, economic, and social subordination of the family is proceeding as a by-product of industrialization and modernization.10

Modern approaches to human security The Leviathan-based MSNS that evolved in Western Europe was founded on a vision of individuals/persons who are rational, autonomous beings. Driven by

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selfish interests, they must be restrained by covenant and a single power above them all. In this light, democracy is a movement to take back some of the powers surrendered to the state and to return them to their rightful owners – persons in the view of libertarians, or groups, as advocated by collectivists. In contrast to the libertarians, communitarians, ethnic interest groups and gender rights advocates, social conservatives argue for strengthening the traditional family. These latter implicitly agree with Chinese Confucians. Radical libertarians in the West belong to the tradition of highly valued individual liberty. They see the modern welfare state as smothering individual rights, and various social movements – insofar as they demand government action and programs – as further eroding liberty. The modern welfare state has become, according to some critics, a “nanny state,” and it expresses the vision of a riskfree existence, while aspiring to remove as many dangers and threats to human security of citizens as possible – even those that might be self-inflicted by individual choice. The problem is that each diminution of risk through the actions of the state involves a reduction of liberty for persons as citizens. Campaigns against tobacco smoking are based on the logic of preventing illness, but succeed at the expense of “smokers’ rights.” This may be a desirable trade-off to society in general, but reduces the freedom of all to indulge in a pleasurable activity. Hand-gun control also has the laudable aim of reducing violence, though its results are debated.11 The goal of the welfare state is to improve human security through education, intervention, and legislation, and to resolve the perceived deficiencies of the liberal laissez-faire state. One finds the welfare state to be the implicit model for some of the current thinking on human security. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has taken the lead in formulating an international program of human security, and several governments, notably in Canada (under Liberal Party rule), followed with their own programs. Even Mongolia has adapted human security themes into its postCommunist defence strategy. The UNDP concept of human security addresses seven sectors, combining the goals of both the liberal laissez-faire and welfare states: economic security, food security, health security, environmental security, personal security, community security, and political security. In 2001, the United Nations Millennium Declaration reiterated the concept, stating that “the main dimensions of human security . . . that is, sustained economic growth, improved education opportunities, promoting health and combating HIV/AIDS, freedom from conflict, the enforcement of international and human rights laws, and coping with climatic change and other environmental threats to sustainable development” (Booysen 2002: 275). Initiated in 1994, the field of human security emerged as a variation of human development, with broader scope than material economic growth and the narrower economic approaches to development in the past. Yet its sponsorship by states and international organizations necessarily subordinates its assumptions, methods and goals to those sponsors. My own view does not dismiss this official program, but sees it, in the rush to translate a concept into policy, as missing an opportunity to explore the potential analytical richness of the concept. Also, by

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starting from the point of state-delivery of human security benefits through a conduit of international cooperation, they may overlook how humans have successfully enhanced their own protection for millennia before the MSNS arrived on the scene, and thus engage in the all-too-common misallocation of resources by newly invented organizations. In Chapter 3, I will formulate with notational formulas a theory of human security which builds upon pre-state human security from the bottom up, and demonstrate that the state is intimately linked to the human condition and man’s striving to survive. The state’s modern lethality and power may have produced the current of alienation, fear and loathing, but restoration of its human basis could retrieve and refine the MSNS as an instrument of further civilization, as well as to improve and prolong the lives of citizens who have been denied the full humane possibilities of the democratic version of the MSNS. This MSNS is deeply flawed, but for the next decades, there are no likely alternatives, so energy and resources are best spent in its improvement rather than destruction or replacement by untried institutions. A theory may be only as useful as its application, and application can be a pathway of validation. Following formulation of the human security theory, I will apply it to the state forms that ruled China from the third century BC through the present as an exploratory exercise. This exercise should provide a historical context to elaborate the theory and perhaps suggest areas where further refinement or amendment is needed. It is also possible that the theory of human security can provide a diagnostic tool in measuring the relative “health” of actual states, and in suggesting areas where helpful policy is needed.

4

Prologue to a theory of human security

Man is the measure of all things, of things that are that they are, and of things that are not that they are not. (Attributed to Protagoras (c. 481–411 BC))

At one time the benevolent affections embrace merely the family, soon the circle expanding includes first a class, then a nation, then a coalition of nations, then all humanity. (Lecky 1955)

Human, social, and state security: the question of survival The human individual is both energizer/initiator and object of human security. The primary justification of the state is that it elevates security of its citizenry. Hobbes judged how the state provides protection at the cost of diminishing human liberty, and twentieth-century states have demonstrated how far they would reduce that liberty, even with little increase in human security. Society is intermediate between individual and the state, if no states existed, communities would have to provide the human security required for extended and adequate life. With the emergence of the first state, and with its further refinement as organized force, other societies became vulnerable and eventually had to create full-time armies and the other accoutrements of government. The cost of not organizing specialized government was to risk conquest, subordination, and absorption. The MSNS has evolved toward democracy as citizens and governments attempt to balance the safety of individuals and the security of states. Lessons of the past century include examples of governments with unrestricted power stripping away social protection of individuals in the name of broadly defined national security. The historical record of the MSNS in the past century is dominated by key terms “state,” “nation,” “sovereignty,” and “modern” are polysemous. Rather than grapple with their multiple meanings, I propose to consider them from the perspective of human security – their operational relevance in preserving and extending human life. Starting from the human individual, we will postulate how protection of men and women is implemented, and how the state addresses basic needs of life.

Prologue to a theory of human security

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The theory of human security provides a framework of analysis which addresses ●

●

●

raw nature (what philosophers have termed “state of nature”) – inhabited by “biological units” – human individuals; society – composed of individuals bonded by consanguineity and division of labor; and state – comprised of government, a people having extensive social and economic interaction, and contiguous territory.

The first step is to identify the primary energizing mechanisms in preserving human life. At the level of the individual, we have described how each organism has a powerful will to live, though its intensity varies individually and over time, and may even shut down under some circumstances. Suicides demonstrate the opposite – a “will to die,” but except among extremist groups (Islamist jihadists, for example), the will to live is universally encouraged. There is a parallel mechanism in the state – usually expressed as “national security” – consisting of will and force, which is triggered at some level of crisis. The Japanese justified intervention and occupation of Manchuria in 1931 in terms of protecting national interests and by extension, Japanese national security, though it was also an opportunity for imperial aggression and expansion. The individual is the basic, indivisible unit of human security. During durations of strength and health and a stable environment, he is usually capable of attending to his own security. When incapable – as in infancy, childhood, illness, or old age – he must rely on close family for security. Therefore, we identify the family as the primary security structure. The protection of persons in pre-state society is maximized by clan and extended family, whose mutual cooperation and loyalties expand the safety of the members. The primary security structure of the state is its military establishment, which is responsible for defense of the government, political order, frontiers and territory, and will be summoned to defend government, population and territory in event of invasion or the breakdown of social order. Societies, in contrast to the individual and state, are acephalous and, absent the state, lack a centralized decision-making apparatus or a full-time professional military to protect “societal security.” Its strength is in reinforcing those institutions which transform individuals into persons and which coordinate the thoughts and actions of persons. Society mediates between state and individuals in a number of ways: It ● ● ●

● ● ●

bonds them into communities; diffuses knowledge; recruits new members through encouragement of stable families whose members produce children as “apprentice persons”; nurtures positive values which strengthen solidarity; reinforces trust to facilitate economic production and exchange; and midwifes an efficient division of labor through role assignment. Stateless societies, where they exist, are generally deficient in protecting their members against organized states.

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Prologue to a theory of human security

Knowledge is a critical component of human, social, and state security, with different qualities and applications according to level of existence. Its role in human security of the individual is to provide an internal map of one’s capabilities and possibilities, as well as intimate experience-based acquaintance with the physical world necessary for life survival. Social knowledge is also a type of cognitive map – an internalized version of collective lore that has been accumulated and articulated by an interacting set of persons, usually over several generations. Social knowledge contributes to human survival by cooperatively deploying persons to roles that directly enhance the security of persons, and indirectly that of individuals. In premodern and modern societies, for example, roles of persons have been usually assigned according to family status, sex, age, and physical and educational characteristics and qualities. Rites of passage in many societies signal the transition from dependent child to contributing member of the community. Only in postmodern societies has there emerged significant questioning and rearrangement of roles in a way that significantly modifies the divisions based on sex, age, and other innate or acquired characteristics. State-relevant knowledge is of two types: ●

●

esoteric statecraft of the rulers, leaders and higher officials, and restricted to a small minority; and exoteric – the outward state symbols, rights, and obligations of citizens/subjects.

The physical environment is a constant presence in raw nature, though a receding one in society and the state. Hobbesian man as individual confronts unmediated nature both as a threat and as a source of life’s vital supplies. For the person in society, nature is less a threat because it is mediated by social matrix. It is a source of materials for economic production and transaction, adding to his store of human security. The social accumulation of technical knowledge enhances the utilization of nature’s riches for economic enrichment, and this knowledge also protects life with new foods, improved shelter, clothing, and medicines. The state can further enhance social exploitation of nature by demarcating and defending the territorial boundaries of lands and waters against interlopers, predators, and invaders, and by facilitating an economic system based on trust and law. Territorial expansion of the MSNS followed the pattern of premodern empires. In the age of European exploration and colonization, Western states acquired lands and peoples that added wealth, though rivalries often led to wars that ruined some and contributed to fragmentation of the globe. As historian Paul Kennedy writes, the twentieth century witnessed the rise of the superpowers which interacted with another trend – the political fragmentation of the globe (Kennedy 1987: 302). Jim Garrison describes the United States as a one-time colony whose later global interests were transmuted into a form of expansion through various overseas campaigns to advance American ideals (Garrison 2004: 85). The primary concern of human security is preserving and enhancing human life. By having membership in society from the moment of birth (or at the moment of conception in many societies), the individual acquires additional protection from

Prologue to a theory of human security

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others who are committed to nurturing his life. The corporeal individual is embedded in nature, while social contacts and networks derive from bonding which is both pragmatic and emotive, based on mutual protection of individuals. The state emerged at a later stage of human evolution, requiring dominance by some and acquiescence by most. With the organization of force, the state’s rulers and guardians could control and deploy coercive instruments and specialists for the defence of the population and resources within its claimed territory against external and internal rivals. As the state has become more sophisticated and powerful, and as other states emerged in competition, national security replaced human security as the raison d’etre of the state, giving birth to raison d’etat to supersede the protection of individuals. We can summarize the chief elements of human security in Table 4.1. In addition to these primary elements, there is also a series of second-order elements that are needed to give a more complete rendering of human security. Abraham Maslow (1968: 49) describes “safety” (similar to security, although his treatment places most emphasis on subjectivity, that is, a sense of security) as fundamental to the personality growth of the child. He also lists basic needs as “safety, belongingness, love, respect and self-esteem” (ibid.: 25). From a human security perspective, only the first, “safety,” would be considered a primary value, and the others secondary. By secondary, I do not mean “unimportant.” Security is primary because without it, the other values cannot be implemented. When a modicum of security and safety is assured, the relative luxury of considering other values and arrangements is available. At the social level, Chinese Confucianism considered benevolence, duty, manners, wisdom, and faithfulness to be cardinal virtues, or values. According to Gertrude Himmelfarb, citizenship formerly was not merely membership, but was based on vigorous civic virtues, in contrast to “caring” virtues. “The vigorous virtues included courage, ambition, adventurousness, audacity, creativity; Table 4.1 Key elements of human security Level

Element Human “unit”

Raw Individual nature Society Person

State

Primary energizing value

Primary security structure(s)

Will to live

Nuclear family Sustenance and Clan; reproduction community

Subject/citizen State/national security

Military

Knowledge

Physical environment

Cognitive Threats and map resources Role and Economic status resource relationships; opportunities practical knowledge Statecraft; Land and exoteric maritime versus territories esoteric knowledge

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the caring virtues are respect, trustworthiness, compassion, fairness, decency” (Himmelfarb 2001: 81). In the best state, according to Plato, justice was the chief criterion. But “justice” is usually in the eye of the beholder, and can be divided into three components – order (Plato’s preference), equality (Marx’s choice), and liberty (valued by Jefferson and the American Founding Fathers). Actual states differ on their priorities of these three values, and usually cultivate one more than the other two, to claim justice as the basis of their rule. This variability results in changeability, and constitutional changes of states reflect changes in the relative weight of the second-order values. The most durable states, in terms of longevity, may be those that balance these values, and the less durable seem to be those which have emphasized and legislated radical equality at the expense of order and liberty.

Formulating sovereignty Sovereignty is the primary criterion of existence for the MSNS. For traditional states, sovereignty was implicit and practical, expressed in custom and law, but was not universal doctrine. In all historical states, sovereignty was both a claim and an actuality, and every state could be judged according to both its claims and its actual reach. Each state expresses its claims to sovereignty over its subjects/ citizens and territory in terms of the primary value, state security, and purports to exercise that sovereignty in conformity with secondary values. Sovereignty is first a set of markers and boundaries that demarcate geographical territory and the extent of government jurisdiction, and second a set of claims over its citizenry, with values indicating the relation between state and citizen, and citizens with each other. The value of order, for example, implicit in all states, is most prominent in authoritarian regimes – those determined to preserve existing power arrrangements and suppress threats of political change. Totalitarian states have stressed equality and order, claiming that transformation of society, under iron tutelage, will liberate its citizens. (That equality is always tempered by creation of a class of sub-citizens, such as the Jews in Nazi Germany, kulaks and counter-revolutionaries in the Soviet Union, and dissidents in Castro’s Cuba – the ubiquitous “enemies of the people.” Equality was also betrayed with the promotion of a single party elite as the enlightened guardians of society.) To effect this change, all social distinctions among citizens based on lineage or education have to be erased, although the rulers exercise extensive powers in the name of managing the great transformation. Security itself may become a paramount value in a time of crisis. Following the London mass transit terrorist bombings of July 7, 2005, government policy of treating all religions and all persons equally faced a challenge from radical Islamism. Civil libertarians in the United States criticize the Patriot Act and the Department of Homeland Security as compromising the liberties of citizens and giving government agencies excessive power. The distinction between actual sovereignty and claimed sovereignty hinges on the difference between national security (primary value) and the state’s hierarchy

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of second-order values (order, equality, and liberty), with possible outcomes of instability, equilibrium, or hegemony. Sovereignty encompasses the claims of a state over a portion of the earth’s surface land and water, and also over individuals and persons as citizens. The character and enforcement of those claims are expressed in its hierarchy of secondary values. To illustrate, we examine how three modern states have based their sovereignty claims on three second-order values.

State allocation of values: the Soviet Union, United States, and China Every state expresses its sovereignty claims with a moral judgment about the values that authorize its actions and existence, and also frames the terms of citizenship which facilitate those values. The political system has been described as the process which the authoritatively allocates values in society. “Values” refer to “things that matter and induce people to fight over them” (Wilson 1993: Preface). In this sense, the political system provides an arena where rules and power predominate. The sovereign state exercises that authority, and has a major role in evaluating – as well as devaluing – those values. James Q. Wilson sees values as standards of moral judgment – unprovable but important in carrying out the role of citizen in the modern state. Values are more than simple preferences and every state makes value claims to justify its sovereign authority, makes laws that enforce those values, and pursues policies to implement values. The Soviet Union – dominance of equality as second-order value The Bolshevik revolution proclaimed the brotherhood of man, and established the world’s first state based on “dictatorship of the proletariat,” and which became the twentieth-century model for modern totalitarianism. The totalitarian state germinated under Lenin and incorporated under Stalin. Communist regimes were planted by force in the pseudo-republics of the USSR and the extinguished Baltic Republics, and were carried into post-World War II Eastern Europe by the Soviet Red Army. Soviet totalitarianism claimed its sovereignty to be based on equality of all citizens. (Enemies of the people were either executed or banished to the gulags, and were considered to be non-citizens.) From the beginning, institutions that violated social, political or economic equality were banned. The Orthodox Church, based on independent wealth and hierarchical organization, was broken, and its monasteries and churches turned into museums of atheism. The imperial aristocracy was abolished and exterminated, their lands and wealth nationalized, and its members imprisoned, executed, or exiled. Feudal familism was prohibited, and Soviet socialism opposed capitalism as it was claimed to be the source of modern inequality of wealth. As Marx had stipulated, material wealth and power accumulated and concentrated into a dominant class, and only by destroying the private property foundation of that power could true egalitarianism be realized. Even the radicals of the French Revolution had not been so thorough.

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Lenin and Stalin reorganized the state to carry out their vision of radical egalitarianism. Socialism would eventually eliminate the state. As the creature of a dominant class, it was based on force and exploited the ruled. But Lenin declared that the battle was not over, and so the state had to be retained as the chief weapon against the forces of reaction. The army was rebuilt, the secret police resurrected, and most importantly, the party, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) emerged as the will and brains of the state. Law and the courts, according to the Communists, always had a class character, and so under the Soviet system, they would reflect the new proletarian character. The Soviet state became the great equalizer in theory, though to quote George Orwell, “All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.” The myth of egalitarian society, accepted by gullible European and American idealists, was belied by the three-class structure which emerged out of the Bolshevik revolution and subsequent civil wars. While maintaining claims of egalitarianism, the Soviet state proceeded to divide citizens into three categories: ● ●

●

party power-holders, especially the central organs; proletarian masses – the general population, including workers, peasants, and soldiers; and class enemies – kulaks, capitalists, national chauvinists, and any other persons who either opposed the Soviet state or were tainted by bloodline or association with class enemies.

As the egalitarian ideology of Bolshevism was transformed into claims of rigorous internal sovereignty over citizens of the state, the exigencies of governing vast territories and diverse ethnic groups inherited from the tsars, fighting threats from the White Russans, Cossacks, and other “reactionary” forces, and interventions from abroad radically altered the actual sovereignty of the new state. The Communist state was ostensibly established for all citizens, but those who opposed this new order, or were suspected of opposing it, were effectively stripped of citizenship protections and incurred the wrath of state force. The Soviet gulags, elimination of the kulaks, state-generated famines, forced migrations of ethnic groups, and finally the great purges were all expressions of isolating and destroying any potential opposition. State sovereignty was to be utilized for the benefit of power-holders and a portion of the general population, but was actually directed as a force to isolate, disarm, and eliminate persons relegated to noncitizenship. The ideology of egalitarianism was beyond mere hypocrisy, and carried the chilling logic that men must be forced to be equal, that those doing the forcing will be “more equal,” and that some were unqualified to be equal, so had to be isolated or eliminated. Nazism carried this one step further and built state sovereignty on the basis of a perverted notion of racial hierarchy, and a hyper-nationalism based on superiority of the “Aryan race.”

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The United States – liberty dominant as second-order value The American revolution created new kind of state – one founded on liberty. In stark contrast to the transition of tsarist autocracy to Soviet totalitarianism, the United States had emerged as a new order in the modern world. Its creation rested on rights and traditions from Great Britain, though it separated from the mother country and created a sovereign nation. Its foundation was the claim of free men to manage their own destiny, and to break the ties of subordination to a distant power. The 1776 Declaration of Independence created the sovereign United States, the war of independence established it as a political and international fact, and the constitution launched machinery of government designed to preserve freedom and independence within a legal order. Unique among modern states, the American experiment purposely designed a system of government with checks and balances that would prevent consolidation of a unitary government. Far from perfect, it nevertheless has prevented consolidation of a monolithic state that recurrently presents threats to human security of individuals in many other places. During the 230 years since 1776, sovereignty of the American state was challenged and expanded on numerous occasions, but none so perilously as in the Civil War. That crisis was the conflict between the freedom of federal states to go their own way through secession, and the national government’s right to preserve the original union. The sovereign claims of the national government prevailed over those of the southern states, though at the cost of over 600,000 lives and $44.4 billion (1990 dollars). The equally important issue was freedom of American slaves – which was also a crisis of egalitiarianism. The Emancipation Proclamation established their liberty, but it required a century to achieve full equality of citizens. The American Civil War raises another human security consideration – social and political friction and disharmony within a state can reduce actual sovereignty. The southern states which formed the Confederacy demanded liberty in the form of “states’ rights,” based on their “peculiar institution,” slavery. The war and subsequent reconstruction manifested a high degree of political friction between North and South that decreased the ability of the central government to carry out its tasks. We attach a general appellation to this phenomenon which is intrinsic to all states, as it affects actual sovereignty – coefficient of political friction. “Political friction” is the degree of organized resistance to the central authority of the state from groups or regions within the territory of the state. The higher the coefficient, the greater the negative effect on actual sovereignty, so a requirement of increasing actual sovereignty and national security is to reduce that coefficient. Its cognate at the social level is the coefficient of social friction. “Social friction” is more amorphous, less organized, and often feeds into and supports political friction. The liberty claims of citizens were articulated in the first ten amendments of the US constitution as the Bill of Rights, and rights of citizens were gradually widened to include all persons. Much litigation and court attention in the United States has been expended in defining and expanding the rights of citizenship.

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The Fourteenth Amendment to the American constitution was used to expand the rights of individual citizens to corporations, liberating them from restrictive legislation that may have hobbled their expansive potential. The novel interpretion bestowed legal “personhood” on business corporations. Since the 1960s, liberty and equality have been fighting for the soul of the United States. The civil rights movement forcefully reminded Americans that blacks were still in a subordinate position in society, and agitated for their complete equality – with the result of affirmative action, special remedial programs in government, business, and schools at all levels. The momentum of the movement – as well as its tactics and language – was adopted by feminism, homosexuals, the physically handicapped, and even immigration lobbyists demanding that all barriers to full participation in society and economy be reduced and removed. (Paradoxically, legislation to remedy a perceived inequality usually established new inequalities, with collective privileges provided to aggrieved groups at the expense of the general public.) Welfare and healthcare have also been battlegrounds of equality, with proponents urging erasure of distinction between rich and poor, producers and indigents. The emergence of conservatism as a counterforce to the momentum of collectivist liberalism has revived personal liberty as a political cause. Neoconservatives oppose the excesses of government regulation, the expanding welfare state, the decline of patriotism and national defence, and secularization of national identity. China – the dominance of order Order is the absence of chaos. Order in human affairs offers predictability. In relation to human security, order is the minimization of violent death, accomplished through impersonal protection of individuals. The good order is justice in classical theory. In Plato’s Republic, justice is accomplished through hierarchy and division of labor, not unlike the Confucian ideal of moral order, based on rule by the virtuous and wise. All modern states imply a vision of justice and order, and their constitutions declare to be guided by that vision. The claims of sovereignty are basically formulae of legitimacy, which derive from a vision of justice. Order is the value most critical in preserving human security, and there is the temptation for governments to trim and limit equality and liberty during times of crisis. President Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War, with over 13,000 persons arrested. One may argue that the values of equality and liberty are morally subordinate to order, and they may be considered as instrumental values that can implement a just order. Order is the paramount value of all states, while equality and liberty can be seen as two differing roads to a just order. The Chinese ICS2 possessed a meta-constitution based on the claim that such a just order had been established in antiquity. Subsequent institutional practice valued this just order in state and society and sought to match previous precedents. Immediately prior to ICS2 was QLS1 – revolutionary in the sense that the Qin dynasty implemented a rough equality, based on harsh law, as the means to establish order – but it was a political order lacking recognizable justice – a draconian order that hegemonized for the sake of peace and plenty, but had little higher vision

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except continuity and state prosperity. This vision would not be scorned, but made the emperor too powerful at the expense of government efficacy and depended too highly on one man. When the First Emperor died, his heir was unequal to the demands of ruling. After the demise of ICS2, the twentieth-century Chinese state abandoned past state visions of just order which were summarized in Confucian ideals and adapted to the global exigencies of, first, liberal (liberty-seeking) democracy, and then of (equality-seeking) Communism. Since liberty and equality, in their unalloyed manifestations, have certain mutual incompatibilities,1 it is not surprising that these instrumental values were carried into the modern Chinese state by two opposing movements – the Guomindang and the Communist Party. The Guomindang State The Guomindang derived its program from the successful and apparently superior (in terms of growing equal justice and rights for citizens, prosperity, and national power) liberal democracies of Western Europe and the United States Constitutional democracy was the final stage of Sun Yat-sen’s program of nationbuilding, and his Five-Power constitution was intended to incorporate the checks and balances of the US constitution, with two more functions drawn from Chinese imperial/Confucian tradition – censorate and examination. For the Guomindang, democracy based on liberty and modified capitalism would produce a Republic of China which could take its place among the civilized nations of the world – as Japan had done at the turn of the century. Liberty in the Chinese Republics (RNS3 and GRS4) was based more on nation than individuals/persons. Communist state-building Inspired by the Bolshevik revolution, the 1921-founded Chinese Communist Party (CCP) believed that inequality was the source of China’s troubles – the international inequality that made China a semi-colony of the industrialized states, and the domestic social inequalities that impoverished and oppressed the Chinese people. Communists waging class war against rural gentry expressed commitment to seeking a just society through egalitarianism. This instrumental egalitarianism suffused Chinese Communism through its revolution and in most of state institutions and policy until 1979 Deng’s economic reforms. This DMS7 approach has opened opportunities for economic liberty, but a commitment to egalitarianism remains intrinsic to the legitimacy claims of the Communist state.

Building a theory of human security We can now proceed to limn and connect these concepts in a notational theory of human security. The central components of the theory are: 1

Each individual human enjoys three strata of protection which enhance his survival chances as biological organism. The primary stratum consists of raw

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2

3

4

5

Prologue to a theory of human security nature with society and state as secondary strata, while the global stratum remains peripheral. Each of the three strata has a primary energizing core consisting of values and structures, with individual and state mechanisms most effective in determining life and death patterns. In the MSNS, institutions of the state have tended to replace social determinations. Individual autonomy and state sovereignty share in valuing independence, but apotheosis of the MSNS in the past century created the totalitarian perversion which diminished individual liberty. Democratization in many countries has modified latent oppressive tendencies of the state. Knowledge at all levels orients action to maximize life preservation. Also, knowledge exists at each level with particular fields of orientation and there may even be security contradictions between fields. A volunteer for military service, for example, will compromise his individual safety in order to enhance the collective security of the state while emotionally, he links his potential sacrifice primarily on behalf of family and friends. As indicated in Chapter 3. state sovereignty consists of two moieties: actualized sovereignty and claimed sovereignty. Actualized sovereignty is a function of: ● ● ● ● ●

●

the human security of all persons in the state; the degree of the intensity and reliability of citizen obligation commitments; the level of political economy; effectiveness of the military; the influences, threats, limitations and opportunities from external relations; and the degree of political friction within the state.

From this we derive a way to measure the human security of an individual citizen, which is given an average value based on the total level of actualized sovereignty of the MSNS. ●

Claimed sovereignty depends on the territorial and external ambitions of a MSNS, and the hierarchical configuration of secondary values. The pattern of claimed sovereignty is the basis of a state’s metaconstitution.

These ideas will be expressed in notational form in the following five formulas summarizing the theory of human security. Such derived concepts enable us to formulate a fairly comprehensive inventory of the inputs of human security – especially the role of individual will, family, state, and military. A globalist ambition to create new international institutions for improving human security would do well to examine the mechanisms and institutions already existing and effective as prelude to any grand project. One test of a theory is to implement it in practice and observe outcomes. Another avenue is to check its validity by applying it to the historical record and

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determine how much explanatory power it provides. In subsequent chapters, we will examine the evolution of the Chinese state in the framework of our human security theory, with particular application of the meta-constitution to accomplish diachronic and synchronic analysis.

Levels of human security inputs Roger Scruton identifies the main components of the MSNS, while linking it to pre-state loyalties as the social foundation of the state: the emergence of the modern Western state, in which jurisdiction is defined over territory, supported by secular conceptions of legitimacy, has also coincided with the emergence of a special kind of pre-political loyalty, which is that of the nation, conceived as a community of neighbours sharing language, customs, territory, and a common interest in defence . . . it is through the idea of the nation, therefore, that we should understand the pre-political loyalty presupposed in the contractarian view of citizenship. (Scruton 2002: 53) The balanced combination of strong individuals, family-centric society,2 and the democratic modern sovereign nation-state has proven to be an effective agent of human security, and the case for replacing them with new institutions has yet to be made. The end of the Cold War was seen to usher in a new era of international relations – decline of the nation-state, end to the bipolar division of the world, open borders and free trade, the superiority of markets over planning in economic development, and devaluation of national sovereignty as the basis of political organization. This brave new world also required redefinition of national security – and of the idea of security itself. The notion of human security has gained currency in the past decade as international organizations and nations have sought to conceptualize and operationalize security actions beyond the confines of national security. The commonly cited UNDP version of human security encompasses a wide range of threats to “humanity.” Initially, the concept referred “narrowly as meaning threats to the physical security of the person.” Fenn Hampson writes about three conceptions of human security: the “human rights” approach, the “safety of peoples” approach, and the “sustainable human development” approach (2002: 16–17). Some of that discussion reformulates developmentalism into human security terms, while other parts emphasize multilateral internationalism as a necessary balance to the state’s excesses or failures. Human security is primarily the preservation of human life, the protection of the human and material resources needed for life, and the prevention of violent or premature death. It requires precautions and preventions, as well as strenuous actions and extraordinary sacrifices when the threat is greatest. The individual is the primary agent in his own security, and humanity has developed additional institutions and structures to assist in increasing human security. Violent or accidental or preventable death – as opposed to “natural” death from old age – is the

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clearest measure of human security failure (HSF). HSF at the individual level is a biological event. Death is inevitable for all individuals, but violent expiration is not.3 When HSF occurs in a societal setting, the person roles and relationships occupied by the individual are also terminated, and the suddenness of death affects a wide range of surviving human relationships. When the political or state status of the individual/person is in place, death also terminates an occupier of the citizen/subject role, which is more interchangeable and easily replaced than the individual or person himself. Modern armies, for example, are based on the replaceability and interchangability of citizens to fill the ranks. The claim that women should serve in combat roles implies this position – that full citizenship has been withheld unless all male opportunities, responsibilities, and roles are open to them as well. Determining when human life begins or ends, given the array of technology and moral relativism in the modern era, goes beyond medical science and into areas of ethics and subjective decision. Partisans for and against abortion have widely differing viewpoints on when human life begins, while euthanasia advocates and opponents strongly disagree on who decides when life is not worth living. In between the beginning and ending of life, there is broad agreement that extraordinary measures must be taken to save healthy children and adults when disaster strikes. But consensus breaks down when citizens are victims of government action, whether there will be actual intervention. The US-led coalition that overthrew Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship in Iraq may have been launched for shaky reasons and inadequate evidence, but the result was a chance for the Iraq people to establish democracy. The indecisiveness of the globalist United Nations contrasted sharply with decisive action of states led by the United States. Human security broadly encompasses the institutions and actions that have evolved and which have been consciously modified to protect the human species – collectively and one life at a time. Life is not self-sustaining and demands constant care and attention. How it is sustained and improved provides the necessary starting point for understanding human security. The internationalist/developmental persuasion of human security emphasizes a collectivist approach. In contrast, our human security theory starts with a narrow definition and individual scope – that human security refers primarily to protecting the life of the individual human, by the individual, and for the individual. Safety from harm is an objective necessity for this protection, but is hardly sufficient without energizing the individual’s will to live. Our theory requires us to identify those human-designed and evolved institutions which reinforce this central concern of preserving life. An individual-centric line of inquiry is crucial as an inventory of what has contributed to human survival, what has become dysfunctional, and what institutions should be preserved and strengthened.

Human levels of existence From stipulating individual human life as the foundation of human security, we next postulate that human philosophical, social, and political evolution has

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produced a human condition encompassing five levels of existence. Patterned behavior in the form of individual capacity and collective institutions protects physical existence, and contains a sequence of security objectives.

Natural/organic existence – individuals and nature Humans exist initially and through a lifetime at through the biological level, at the individual unit of existence. He survives by grace of nutrients, water, shelter, and other inputs which provide basic security. Without these inputs, the individual expires. The human individual is more than organism, and has a will and determination to live and overcome adversity. Reason and knowledge also assist in the acquisition, distribution, and deployment of inputs, as well as improving their efficiency. Maternal and family protection after birth provides primary security for infant and child, who would otherwise be mostly defenceless in the natural environment. Families are also the vital link between human existences as biological and social being. The physical human being is an individual – a biological “entity” that is born, lives, and dies – and is the irreducible, indivisible core of human security, the starting point of all other human considerations. At this primary level, the individual has no initial identity except as a definable package of DNA, cells, and organs, plus reason which enables him to acquire and process information into knowledge and memory beyond mere sensation. The family – primarily mother and father – provides the biological matrix first of organic existence, and then of social being which allows the individual to become a person. For human security purposes, parents insure protection for helpless infants and his initial environment for growth and survival. Without at least one committed parent or surrogate, the individual infant cannot survive. With two committed adults, his life chances are increased. Through instruction, experiment, and experience, the individual acquires the knowledge necessary for survival.

Social existence – personhood and society Social existence is an overlay on biological life. Through social interaction, the individual is transformed into a person who thereby receives additional increments of protection. After birth, the infant has the potential to grow into complete personhood, with all the attendant protections, obligations, rights, and responsibilities congruent with social expectations and customs. As Gertrude Himmelfarb writes, the family (is) the bedrock of society . . . the family, even more than civil society, is the “seedbed of virtue,” the place where we receive our formative experiences, where the most elemental, primitive emotions come into play and we learn to express and control them, where we come to trust and relate to others, where we acquire habits of feeling, thinking, and behaving that we

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Prologue to a theory of human security call character – where we are, in short, civilized, socialized, and moralized. The family, it is said, is a “miniature social system, with parents as the chief promoters and enforces of social order.” (Himmelfarb 2001: 51)

She lists the primary functions of the family, which correspond to requirements of human security: “the rearing and socializing of children and the caring for its weakest and most vulnerable members, the old and the young.” Interactions with other individuals create a social level of existence and add a layer of identity – the person – to the individual. This identity layer is initially a mother–fetus,4 mother–infant bond that affectively connects father, siblings and others within the immediate family. Personhood is not only identity, but a claim of protection by stronger and mature members of the family and consanguineous group. As the child matures, he acquires obligations to protect others within the family, clan, and tribe. Acquisition of knowledge becomes more complex and structured in organized society, with more resources expended on transmission of the collectively accumulated skills, ideas, and cultural lore to apprentice persons through education. In this theory, we refer to “personhood” as a strictly social category – the connections, identity, obligations, and rights that an individual is born to and acquires in living with other individuals in the pre-state context. In modern times, the notion of person has acquired legal connotations. The Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution used the word “person” in reference to black males, as clarified by the Supreme Court. Later court cases expanded the scope of the Amendment to cover corporations, which were deemed to have equal protection under law, and were to be treated as legal persons. Personhood is thus a legal as well as a social category. Political existence – citizenship and the state Biological and social existence is prerequisite to a political level of being. Within the Hobbesian version of state formation, a person surrenders part of his right of self-defense to a sovereign authority, which is then authorized by the constituent persons within society to exercise collective security for the sake of protecting all persons from each other, and from other states which have military and coercive capacities to deploy at home or abroad. The Hobbesian theory of Leviathan radically secularized the state. Earlier, the dominant view of the political community was that it existed as part of God’s plan. St Paul wrote to the Romans: “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God” (Romans, 11:13). “A modern democracy is perforce a society of strangers. And the successful democracy is the one where strangers are expressly included in the web of obligations. Citizenship involves the disposition to recognize and act upon obligations

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to those whom we do not know” (Scruton 2002: 53). This “society of strangers” extends to nondemocracy as well. In the modern world, all persons are subject to state and society rights and obligations, and have been transformed into citizens, or more precisely, acquire an additional level of security existence we term “citizenship.” The actual increment of human security depends on the character of the specific state where they hold citizenship. From the human security perspective, the primary importance of citizenship is the array of protections the state bestows on persons, while not ignoring the costs in freedom “charged” for this service. The state consists of territory, government, and society, and is the institutional framework that provides a higher order of security for persons within society through its ability to concentrate coercive force for mobilizing human, economic, and physical resources against internal and external enemies. The ancient Greek polis, the Roman Empire, and the modern state all bestowed the identity of citizen on persons who had legal and participatory rights in the state. The state demands exclusive loyalty from its citizens.5 Patriotism – especially in time of war – sets up two standards. The first requires unswerving loyalty, uncritical acceptance of national goals, and sacrifice of life, liberty, and property for collective security. The second standard demands disdain for an enemy, who may be drained of human qualities in order to mobilize collective antipathy. Both outcomes of patriotism are useful to the state, but the second is a two-edged sword that capitalizes on the baser proclivities of ethnocentrism. For man as moral actor, the dissonance between the two patriotic standards violates justice and universal love. Global/species – “Globizen” existence Only a global commonwealth, where nations cannot claim exclusive loyalty of citizens at the expense of universal justice, can overcome the sovereign security claims of states. Citizenship demands exclusivity, which values patriotism and loyalty, particularly in war. Humans have also developed a moral nature, which can be ●

●

Local/social in the sense of family or society or state specific. Edward Banfield (1958) identified amoral familism at the local level as the basis of solidarity and excluding all others. Confucianism, predominant in China, Japan, and Korea, stressed filial piety and family loyalty as the foundation of morality and society; or Species general – inclusive of all humanity. The Mohist doctrine of universal love in China manifested an egalitarian utilitaritarianism not so distant from the harsh theory of the Legalists. Stoicism, Christianity, and later Kantian morality, all stressed the brotherhood of man.

The modern version of moral universalism is expressed both in the UN Charter and in the widening scope of global treaties which implicitly claim superiority to the

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MSNS. Activities and moral imperatives on behalf of humanity – regardless of social membership or state citizenship – purport to extend human security on a universal basis. This process differs from bestowing a new level of citizenship since there are few effective coercive or enforcement or accountability mechanisms at a global level. What would achievement of global security involve? It would probably resemble a world-state without the parochial anchors of nationalism and sovereignty – a set of laws global in scope, with an economic system benefiting all peoples equally – a global commonwealth. Making it accountable or balancing its agencies’ powers would be another challenge. While progress toward this goal appeared possible after the end of the Cold War, the 9/11 event, Islamist jihadism, liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the war on terrorism have halted progress to the global commonwealth project. The larger issue is that the energized American state under George W. Bush has overshadowed what had seemed to be an international juggernaut toward replacement of the nation-state, although the European Union has taken steps to absorb the sovereignties of major countries accustomed to warring against each other. Spiritual existence – the soul and spirituality We denote the religious vision of peace on earth as Elysium – where all men and women are saints, sages, and heroes. Perhaps only in an unattainable Elysian existence of utopia, where humans have overcome their mortal struggles for existence, peace, and felicity will the full spiritual vision be achieved. At this level, an idealized “soul” realizes this religious vision that transcends physical, social, economic, political, and even moral existence. Security is banished as a concern in Elysium – an earthly Paradise that contrasts starkly with our imperfect world. The modern rational/secular world discounts the role of beliefs and religion as error or private orientation at odds with empirical science. Yet much of the global population finds solace and inspiration in the promises and premises of religion. Religions have historically generated wars and violent movements, or have reinforced more secular actions, causing great insecurity and destruction to their enemies.6 It is unwise to underestimate the influences of non-rational, subjective psychology in security matters, specifically as a triggering or energizing force for action. As a fifth level of existence, spirituality in the temporal world seeks peace, wisdom, and virtue, but requires physical security to embark on its contemplation. Depite its historical flaws, religion provides a vision of this utopia, which is often seen as a template for just order in the world. Secularists may also share in the vision, though they require it to undergo drainage of any supernatural or theological dimensions. However, from the standpoint of objective human security, the religious level of human security is the lowest. We summarize these levels of existence, their components, and notations in Table 4.2. Following the method of Thomas Hobbes, the theory of human security begins with man in the state of nature and imagines how society and state have been constructed as institutional structures for man’s protection. Globalists are seeking to

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Table 4.2 Levels of human existence (shaded cells indicate the scope of the theory of human security) Context of existence

Human “unit”

Human security component

Primary affinity unit

Knowledge component

Material/production/ distribution component/network

Raw nature

Individual [I]; individual will to live [Wi]

Human security of individuals [HSi]

Family [F]

Tools, weapons, nutrition, shelter  natural environment [Ei]

Society

Person [P]

Human security of persons [HSp]

Clan (premodern society), association (modern society)

Cognitive map derived from personal experience and family instruction [Ki] Education derived from specialized societal instruction [Ks]

State

Citizen [C]

Human security of citizens [HSc]

MSNS, Nation

Global commonwealth

Globizen

Elysium (Utopia)

Soul

Equal and Humanity egalitarian security Immortality, Cosmos; or at least Supreme liberation Being from mundane considerations

Market economy, driven by division of labor [Es]

Elite – Political economy, esoteric driven by state knowledge; priorities [Ep] masses – exoteric [Kp] Ethically Global economy, derived driven by redistributive goals Revealed Material world through transcended religion

construct a fourth structure that will supersede the state, or to build a super-state such as the European Union, to absorb member-states of a region. In either case, it is unclear that these efforts can provide the same degree of security as the combination of individuals, societies, and the MSNS. Given the central role of the state in delivering human security in human history and the relatively secondary role that alternative structures have played so far, we will accord our main attention to it as the center of evolution of the Chinese empire into the yet incomplete Chinese MSNS.

5

A notational theory of human security

And reason always favored life over death and profit before loss, didn’t it? (Sienkiewicz 1991)

Human sciences can rarely be expressed in precise mathematics. However, quasi-mathematic notations are useful in clarification of political relationships. Our discussion so far has focused on identifying the main elements of human security. In this chapter, these elements and their relationships will be compressed into notational form, and summarized in five linked formulas. For the task of analyzing evolution of the Chinese MSNS, two of the formulas will be of greatest relevance and utility. Formulas Three and Five address the two forms of state sovereignty – actualized and claimed. To derive these notational expressions, we begin with the core human individual in raw nature.

Formula One: human security of individual [HSi] Human security’s primary concern is postponement of the second central event (birth is first) in every individual’s life – death. Humanity has been successful in extending mortality, but with uneven results. Women live years longer than men in many societies, and poverty has a negative effect on longevity. Occupation also plays a role, as does the social and economic and knowledge infrastructure. Over centuries, the state has played an expanding role – more with increasing than decreasing life chances for subjects/citizens. A series of formulations express the role of state and society in affecting longevity by decreasing violence and its effects, and address the cumulative effect of individuals, society, and state in affecting the life chances of individuals. Protecting individual life and safety is the primary objective of human security. Although modern society has intermingled society, state, persons, group, and security in a complex fashion, we can abstract pre-institutional tools which men have devised when confronting the natural environment without benefit of collective institutions. As reviewed in Chapter 2, fictionalized and evocative accounts are available in literary works or modern films. In these and from actual experience, a common set of human security elements emerges that can be

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authenticated from reflection of people who have faced dangers in the wilds or in treacherous situations. 1 Individual self-security and the will to live [Wi ]. Fear of death, the basis of Hobbes’ Leviathan, is universal. An instinctive will to live is the primary source of human security, subordinating even rational calculation that odds against survival may be too great. This will to live includes physical capacity that is independent of supports from other individuals. For infants, the aged, the infirm, and pregnant women, there are inherent physical limitations greater than for mature, healthy, males, with corresponding lower autonomous capacity of selfprotection. Although an individual may live and die beyond the boundaries of society, he enjoys many of the gifts of society’s accomplishments – safety of environment, material accumulation, concerns of others, language, ideals, and knowledge. Aron Ralston, Chuck Noland, and Robinson Crusoe were physically outside their social network, but also existed as creations of their respective cultures and societies. Death of their bodies would signal their end as individual, person, and citizen.1 2 Family [F]. Strictly speaking, families produce individuals and nurture them into personhood. While Western sociology refers to this as primary socialization, Confucianism assigned a high moral value to the family bond, which is based primarily on the biological links of mother–child, father–mother, and father–child, and secondarily extended to further links of consanguinity, friendship, and royal subject. The protection of infants and children begins in the family, and extends beyond the “biological production unit” to other relatives and clan members in a combination of pragmatic reciprocity and altruism. Similarly, protection of vulnerable family members is naturally stronger than for distant relations or strangers. Adult and able-bodied individuals are more self-sufficient and independent than vulnerable individuals, and are more likely to survive adversity than minors, pregnant women, elderly, handicapped, the ill and injured, and others requiring protection. Human altruism helps improve the odds for the vulnerable. The [F] element may also be a negative factor when primary trust of family is betrayed – abortion, if one considers the fetus to be an individual rather than mere tissue, is one danger. Infanticide, families selling daughters into prostitution or sons into slavery or bondage, or even cannibalism (Becker 1997) are not unknown, though rarely done except in extreme desperation. 3 Knowledge [Ki ]. Conscious knowledge comes from observation and reason, and humans and other sentient beings also possess a subliminal knowledge necessary for survival. Pain and discomfort are sensory signals of danger, and an individual will usually take immediate steps to remedy the threat. Memory, intelligence, and calculation supplement instinct, and make long-term planning for survival possible. Michael Oakeshott divided knowledge into two types: practical and technical, and they have direct consequences for human security of individuals and

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persons. Other forms of knowledge can also be identified, although they are more relevant at more complex levels of existence. ●

●

Practical knowledge is based on experience, and addresses how to take care of human survival – the skills of using techniques, tools, and weapons. This is transmitted by verbal communication and imitation or apprenticeship, and usually requires face-to-face communication. Technical knowledge is more theory than practice, although it is learned and summarized from practical knowledge, or it may be propounded as untested theory. It generally requires written language for communication, and specialized institutions, such as schools and universities, for transmission.

In addition to Oakeshott’s two categories, we can identify three more types of knowledge that have relevance to human security: ●

●

●

Self-knowledge refers to matters of identity and how individuals fit into society. Security depends on society’s division of labor – the specialized skills of warriors, technicians, scientists, physicians, nurses, producers, and homemakers (who are usually omitted from security considerations, but are a vital link in education, health, and making communities and markets work). Also, this is knowledge about a society, why it is worth defending, dying for, and even killing for. Virtual, or common, knowledge is conventional wisdom that resembles pseudo-knowledge, often transmitted as rumor, but is more passive and less motivational, in the sense of energizing action. It is public opinion, which can be tested with polls and elections, and is highly vulnerable to media manipulation in modern societies. It is also culture, consisting of shared values and common informal institutions and behavior patterns. Finally, pseudo-knowledge resembles self-knowledge but is characterized by a high degree of subjective certainty. It is myth that makes action and sacrifice possible and necessary. It was “race theory” in an earlier period. As ideology, political myth promises liberation and revolutionary utopias, but also has been a major source of insecurity for those outside the circle of the elect. Nazism, Maoism, Communism, and Fascism as well as various cultist and terrorist dogmas are examples of modern pseudo-knowledge, which may contain certain insights, and have depended upon application of technical knowledge for expansion and success. Ultimately, these non-verifiable ideologies can be eliminated only by death and defeat, and rarely by persuasion, and they usually contain some fatal flaw that has not allowed their success to be permanent. In summary, human security must include knowledge, which is cumulative and transmittable, and has different forms and outcomes.

4 Natural environment[Ei ]. For human security purposes, the environment of raw nature refers to the material resources needed for survival – food, water, shelter, clothing, weapons, tools, medicines, and so on. Territory is the

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primary security realm of an economy that supports individuals, and is affected by characteristics including terrain, climate, fertility, and strategic defensability, which are vital to human security. Man in raw nature becomes economically relevant only insofar as he interacts with others, which transforms him into a person. We can summarize the individual’s pre-social human security (HSi) as the sum of Wi  F  Ki  Ei, in the following notation:

Formula One: Human security of an individual in pre-society raw nature HSi Wi  F  Ki  Ei or, The pre-social individual’s human security, [HSi] is the aggregate of an individual’s will and physical capacity to survive [Wi], Family inputs[F], Knowledge [Ki], and natural environment [Ei].

Although it is not possible to predict when or how a particular individual will expire, Formula One identifies those elements which, if deficient, will reduce life chances.

Formula Two: human security of persons [HSp] The human security of individuals in a pre-social “state of nature” is highly vulnerable. Some families and groups will have better life expectancies, due to numbers, cohesion, and higher individual vectors of Wi, F, Ki, and Ei. These advantages will be beneficial, not nullified, in organized societies which seem to have emerged as responses to security threats (consisting of economic, natural, or from other human groups) and from the recognition that cooperative relationships based on a division of labor and distribution based on exchange would better enable survival of physically weaker individuals and contribute to dominance of the group. At the same time, competition for mates, territory, and resources stimulated expansion of knowledge and development of economic resources. Conflicts erupted within and between social groupings, and were often destructive, but also increased the security of one group at the expense of another by confiscation, or enhanced both victors and defeated if the conflict resulted in incorporation of respective superior adaptations. Cooperation, competition, and conflict thus contributed to human security of persons (HSp) within the social grouping, while sharpening and reinforcing their division of labor, more deeply embedding their roles as persons in their respective societies. The individual can become a person only in society, and therein accrues a second level to his existence and security. This also adds social identity in the form of status, role, long-term obligations, and behavior restrictions under custom and culture. In acquiring membership in society, the individual achieves personhood, and enhances his human security within society as membership denotes one is no longer the prey nor enemy of the group.

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A notational theory of human security A person’s total human security [HSp] is equal the sum of:

●

●

●

●

●

●

his pre-societal (individual) human security [HSi], that is, what the individual brings and contributes to his societal membership. Note that this element is derived in Formula One. plus or minus some amount of social liberty [Ls] he has surrendered or gained as the cost or profit of membership in society. There is always decreased social liberty [Ls] in the loss of an individual’s unlimited right of self-protection, as well as a narrowing of skills and choices imposed by the division of labor and socially imposed restrictions on choice. An example of diminished liberty is the position of women in Islamic fundamentalist societies, such as Taliban Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia, compared to generally greater female freedom in more loosely organized nomadic societies (Mongolia for example). Social membership also expands [Ls] with greater mutual protections, material benefits, and opportunities for greater scope of cooperative action and movement, and so [Ls] can also have a positive value. plus the increment of social knowledge [Ks] that accrues to persons in society through greater exchange and distribution of information and technology, as well as institutions for education. The subjects of this knowledge are broader and more abstract than required in the state of raw nature, and require a common language for communication within a framework of shared culture. It should be noted that some forms of pseudo-knowledge – such as superstition or national–cultural chauvinism – usually subtract from the efficacy of social knowledge. The criterion of social knowledge is the degree to which an item (fact) of knowledge contributes a person’s human security, and requires reference to other people. For example, an individual has a severe headache and knows from experience [Ki] that willow bark will provide relief. A person knows [Ks] a pharmacist who can provide even more effective relief. plus obligation/loyalty [Os] to other persons in his social network. Bonds of trust and altruism are critical in energizing human security benefits in society. Intra-familial betrayals of children or parents activate revulsion as violations of expectation of trust, while self-sacrifice for the sake of the life or well-being of a family member is celebrated as intrinsically virtuous. plus or minus economy [Es], the economic advantages of greater exchange of material goods in more trusting economic relationships with other persons, creating the social or market economy. Commodities are produced from raw materials found in the environment [Ei] or from secondary materials processed by others not directly related to survival – such as tools, vehicles, cultural items, or new foods. Participation in a confiscatory social economy may reduce a person’s or a family’s material standing and so the political economy [Ep] could also be a negative factor for a portion of the population within the state. plus or minus an individual average (indicated by underlines) sum of security advantage, derived from the social dividends and penalties of cooperation, competition, and conflict, which is summarized as the average Coefficient of Social Friction [SF].2 By friction, I refer to physical and social contact between persons. Conflict endangers individuals and so is negative,

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while cooperation is positive. Competition may be either positive or negative or neutral. As a mechanical metaphor in society, friction can produce unity of two or more units if they are moving in harmony (cooperation), but if the units in contact or proximity are moving in different directions (conflict), “heat, wear, and breakage” will result. Competition includes elements of both cooperation and conflict, and the result may be destructive or positive. A high value for [SF] decreases [HSp]. The human security of a person in society is derived in the following:

Formula Two: Human security of a person in pre-political society HSp  (HSi Ls  s  s  Es) (SF) or The human security of a person in a socially defined group is equal to that person’s individual human security, plus or minus the liberty he acquires or surrenders with membership in society, plus the access to socially generated cultural and technical knowledge, plus obligation/ loyalty to other persons in his social network, plus or minus the effects of a social economy, and plus or minus the average effects of the social friction coefficient.

This formula stipulates that the individual generally gains in life chances (human security) through membership in society – that is, personhood. One condition where there can be a decrease in human security is under conditions of social anarchy, when an existing state collapses and fragments of society acquire some powers of the full state – especially armed military formations. Commonly called warlordism, it has been experienced in China and other countries in history. Collective [SF] is also characteristic of revolutionary activity, class or religious warfare, or other disintegration of state authority. In sum, that level of existence we call personhood provides a social layer of human security for the individual.

Formula Three: human security in the state – subjects and citizens [HSc] To determine the total human security available to an individual/person/citizen in the state, we must calculate (or at least notationally represent) the vectors of sovereignty. Only actualized sovereignty has effect in this calculation. Society is prior to the formal state, whose government can concentrate and deploy force. Max Weber wrote that the state is based on a monopoly of force. The character of the state and the key to its authority is sovereignty, which has claims over citizens and territory. The MSNS claims that its law and control extend to its frontier borders, and is equal and indivisible in all parts. This claimed sovereignty will be notated as [Sc], and must be effectuated by actualized sovereignty [Sa], which is

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a descriptive and verifiable measure of exclusive state control over population and territory. The contemporary Chinese state, for example, claims absolute control over all its territory, but exerts no direct control over the province of Taiwan, which has continuously demonstrated and guarded its autonomy. According to Stephen D. Krasner (2001: 7), The term sovereignty has been commonly used in at least four different ways . . . Domestic sovereignty involves both authority and control; interdependence sovereignty, only control; and Westphalian and international legal sovereignty, only authority. Authority is based on the mutual recognition than an actor has the right to engage in a specific activity, including the right to command others. Authority might, or might not, result in effective control. Control can also be achieved through the use of force. If, over a period of time, the ability of a legitimated entity to control a given domain weakens, then the authority of that entity might eventually dissipate. Conversely, if a particular entity is able to successfully exercise control, or if a purely instrumental pattern of behaviour endures for a long period, then the entity or practice could be endowed with legitimacy. In many social and political situations both control and authority can affect the behaviour of actors. Actualized sovereignty [Sa], or what Krasner terms “control,” encompasses competent national security, and directly delivers a layer of human security to the individuals/persons/citizens comprising a national population. Sovereignty is the central property of the state, and derives from the power and authority of its institutions. Actual state sovereignty [Sa] is based on power, while claimed sovereignty [Sc] refers to state authority. The state further enhances its external and internal security with military forces, augmented by police and other security forces, notated as [M]. The state derives additional strength from social solidarity – a harmonious and cooperative national society will have greater security than one riven with conflict. This elusive national harmony, translated as a low political friction coefficient, is designated as [PF]. At the high end it is conflict and has a negative value. Politics may mitigate or deepen [PF], and in extreme cases result in civil war. Adding the benefits and dividends of state security to persons transforms them into citizens, but it is not a cost-free benefit. Each person must surrender some further degree of personal social liberty to the state, just as each pre-society individual exchanges natural liberty for the greater protections in a social order. The costs of citizenship include military service, taxes, obedience to laws, some subordination to officials, and tolerance of other particular interests. We can summarize these as Obligation [Oc]. In return, the citizen receives protection. Obligation [Oc] refers to the reciprocity of duties between state and subject/ citizens, and is a form of contractual duty encompassing subjective loyalty – the orientation of exclusive affection for the state and its symbols. Democratic rights, customarily enshrined in law and constitution, are stipulations by the state that its sovereignty claims are not unlimited, and that the security rights of individuals

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and persons are safe from excessive submersion into citizenship. That is, the state is not bestowing anything new on citizens, merely setting limits to its own sovereignty. Political economy [Ep] is the social or market economy enhanced, supervised, and coordinated by the state, which has a vital interest in extracting resources to carry out its functions. To this end, the state’s contribution to society is greatest when it establishes and expands an infrastructure of law to guarantee order, preserve property and contract, and defend territory and citizens from predators and other states. As Laozi wrote, ruling the state is like cooking a small fish – it must be done lightly. In the world of multiple states, external relations [ER] with other states are a critical factor in a state’s security. Bilateral relations may be neutral, alliance, or antagonistic, and we notate this element with corresponding plus, minus, or neutral effect on state security. We notate the existing national security of a state (actualized sovereignty) as follows:

Formula Three: Actual sovereignty of a state Sa  (HSp  Op), /Ep, Kp, /M, PF, /ER The actual sovereignty [Sa] of a state is a function of: 1

2 3

4 5 6

the sum of the human security of all persons who are counted as citizens [HSp]; and the cumulative intensity of obligations of each citizen to the state [Op]; the performance of the political economy [Ep]; specialized and usually esoteric political knowledge [Kp], drawn from experience and history, and utilized for the establishment, preservation, and expansion of state power; the coercive institutions of the state – primarily the military [M] – to defend it against external enemies and internal rebellions; the coefficient of (domestic) political friction [PF]; and external relations [ER] may be either positive or negative in their effect on actualized sovereignty.

Formula Three shows how national security is maximized or neutralized or diminished at the state level. An array of positive components, with low [PF], will strengthen actual state sovereignty, while low or negative magnitudes and a high [PF] will have the opposite effect. Central to this formula is that sovereignty of the state is a doubly dependent variable – first depending on the human security of individuals, and secondly on the security of persons in society. The state does not or can not create security out of pure will or superior design, but depends on the aggregate of individual/persons comprising its population.

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Formula Four: validating Hobbes How does national security reinforce human security of the individual/person/ citizen, and contribute to protection of human life? The concentration of power in the MSNS and its earlier precursors could be fatal to enemies as well as citizens. An argument in favor of international law and organizations that restrict the freedom of states is that states are dangerous to their citizens and other states, and so their sovereignty over citizens must be accountable and delimited by universal norms and law. The international order of sovereign states may be a form of international anarchy, the argument goes. If citizens have less security under the state than they do in society, for example, this would validate the need to neutralize the state, or bring it more under the control of putative world government.

Formula Four: Actual human security of one citizen in a state HSc  Sa /population  Sa The human security of an individual/person as citizen [HSc] of a state is equal to the actualized sovereignty of the state [Sa] (derived in Formula Three), divided by the number of citizens who are protected by that state. This operation calculates the average actual security available to each citizen or semi-citizen (those persons who do not have full citizenship privileges but claim protection of the state because of residence, relationship to a full citizen, or other considerations).

This average rarely reflects reality for citizens, where personal differences in status and wealth influence security. This average human security per citizen is analogous to a savings account that is held individually, and can be drawn upon in times of need, although in this case, the “bank” (state) decides to whom and how much “savings” can be withdrawn. Each state has “reserves” and the totals will vary over time and from one country to another. Normative citizenship derives its possibility from the actual sovereignty of the state – its empirical ability to enforce its laws and rules over all citizens within its territory, and to protect its citizens from the laws and predations of other states. It is only after establishment of actual sovereignty that the obligations and protections of citizenship are possible. The subsequent supplementing of citizenship with norms of human rights and natural rights requires the prior establishment of state sovereignty. In contrast to the mathematical approximation of “average human security” as a function of actual sovereignty, the reality is that security and life risks are higher for those actually engaged in protecting citizens. Security workers (mostly males) in the military, front-line health workers, police, fire and rescue forces, and so on, face greater dangers but also are better trained and equipped to deal with threats to their individual security, and to assist the general population. Those who have better education, economic position, health, and family circumstances will

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have greater human security than the worse off – but these derive from pre-state circumstances as individuals and persons, not from the benefits of citizenship.3 A new MSNS, usually upon establishment of actual sovereignty, enunciates its claims to what will be included in its scope of government – not only territory and peoples, but its relationship to a higher moral order, its goals and policies, as well as obligations of subjects/citizens. In modern times, the enshrinement of average protection by actual sovereignty establishes the foundation for normative citizenship based on equality. Modern egalitarianism is partly derived from an idealization of the anticipated benefits of the sovereign state. Human security can be delivered to citizens of a strong state, and thus they have a vital interest in obeying that state, contributing to its strength, and accepting its claims of sovereignty as necessary for individual/personal survival. At this point, if we compare Formula One to Formula Four, if the friction coefficients are low and other elements positive, the citizen has a higher degree of human security than the individual in a state of raw nature. This proves Hobbes correct, but only under conditions of a well-ordered state that protects the autonomy and lives of its citizens – conditions which elude many an incomplete MSNS.

Formula Five: claims of the state [Sc] and incompatible values Finally, what a state claims and how much human security the state actually delivers often differ substantially, and this difference will be addressed as a central energizing element in the MSNS, often leading to conflict with other states. In addition, claimed sovereignty expresses the state’s portrayal of itself, its ideals, and its claim to authority – a pattern of claims we have called meta-constitution.

Formula Five: Claimed sovereignty of the state Sc  Tc, Cc, ERc, Av(/ Vo, / Ve, / Vi) The claimed sovereignty of a state is a function of Territorial claims [Tc], Claims by the state over its citizens [Cc], Claims by the state on other states and by other states on the subject state [ERc], and 4 The vector of three Allocated Values [Av] – order, equality, and liberty (/ Vo, / Ve, / Vi). (“ ” conveys the two dimensions of values – intensity and variability.) 1 2 3

Claims of a state over territory, citizens/subjects, and other states are activated by a mix of historical experience, ambitions of rulers, and estimated needs for state security. [Av] denotes the mix of allocative values which reflects changing distribution and current priorities. Thus, claimed sovereignty [Sc] is a function of

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territorial claims and of allocative values, which is a function of changes in order, equality, and liberty. ●

●

●

●

[Vo]: The political value order is based on state deployment of coercion to minimize overt political friction [PF]. State coercion may consist of moral suasion, physical or psychological force, or a combination of all three. Within the scope of claimed sovereignty [Sc], order, equality and liberty are values only, and not substantive products, although these values can lead to specific actions and outcomes. [Ve]: The political value equality usually requires state deployment of coercion to achieve allocation of security resources based on equal distribution of human security benefits. [Vl]: The state’s political value liberty does not normally depend on deployment of coercion to allow allocation of security resources based on individual/ personal calculations and preferences, which are derived primarily from the effectiveness of individual human security [HSi], and secondarily from the human security of persons in pre-state society [HSp]. However, coercion may be deployed to restrain liberty from diminishing equality which can increase political friction [PF]. Also, coercion may be used to remove social or political restraints on liberty. [/ ] indicates the increase or decrease in the state’s enforcement of each of the three political values. The interactive and mutual influence of these values are critical in identification of political issues, legislation, enforcement of laws, and justification of actions.

Political values and the state The state’s claim of sovereignty over territory and citizens is mediated by the claims of other states and by the allocation of values. Much discussion of the state by political philosophers has focused on justice – what it is, and how the state should maximize a just order. Every state claims to seek justice, and these claims are expressed in the combination of values – order, equality, and liberty. Because all three cannot be maximized simultaneously, states determine their priority, reducing one or two so that the third can take the leading role in justification of policy. The formulation of claimed sovereignty in the last of the five formulas reflects recognition that, without actual human security (not directly affected by [Sc]), rudimentary justice may not be not possible. In raw nature, the impossibility of common values is clear. Believers in man’s essential goodness advocate pre-state “restorative justice” to reclaim social moral balance, but in the world of the MSNS, this will remain a minor remedy. Justice requires the prior guarantee of human security, and the MSNS has historically developed as the preeminent provider of that security. Values inform the content and direction of government within the sovereign state. All states claim sovereignty, but claims do not produce actual sovereignty. Actual sovereignty actuates state security and its distribution, through trickledown to unit level (citizens), which the more rhetorical claimed sovereignty

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cannot. A major difference between [Sa] and [Sc] is that the former more directly expresses the life, death, and well-being chances of individuals as persons and as citizens, while the latter is generated by values allocated by the state. Sovereignty claims may lead to actions, as war or threat of war, that will test actual sovereignty (as national security), but in themselves those claims are significantly derived from values. Three principal values are pursued by a state in guiding allocation and distribution of security benefits to citizens: Order [Vo], Equality [Ve], and Liberty [Vl]. In theory, the MSNS adheres to equality in allocating security benefits to citizens. That no citizen shall have greater or less protection than any other is an impractical ideal violated by the very nature of government. Heads of state and their ministers – those responsible for representing and making decisions for the maintainence of the government – are protected in their office by special guards and procedures. Crime rates in poor urban areas demonstrate the slippage of the egalitarianism of security. The demand for egalitarian distribution of state protection makes sense from the perspective of Formula Four by transforming a mathematical average into an ideal and into a legal target or goal. This human security ideal of full equality [Ve] by means of state action is a relatively radical intervention, as QLS1 demonstrated. The value of order [Vo] has probably the most ancient lineage. Allocation of security benefits under the principle of order specifies that certain social or political categories are more deserving of security than others. Contemporary North Korea is the clearest example, with its Soviet-type three-class division into an elite, masses, and enemies of the people. In that benighted polity, the political leadership enjoys luxury and maximum security, while “class enemies” are condemned to subhuman imprisonment. The Soviet Union had its nomenklatura, and Communist China has a complex array of categories of privilege, and both had (and have, in the case of China) extensive prison camps for dissidents. Communist states, despite their proclamation of egalitarianism, have been among the most hierarchically organized societies in the twentieth century. But it is their claim of egalitarianism that has been used in its core formula of legitimacy. The value of liberty [Vl] is more permissive than allocative, insofar as it preserves the rights that individuals/persons possessed prior to the state, and thus differs from order [Vo] and equality [Ve] in that the latter two are active by investing the state with power to impose its agenda on citizens, and, more importantly, to modify social relationships. Liberty as a political value in the state began hesitantly in ancient Greece, was incorporated gradually in European law and custom, and blossomed in the American revolution.4 The modern phenomenon of nationalism, in a sense, confiscated individual/personal liberty and reinvented it as “national liberation” for the purpose of collective national liberty from colonialism – even though this version often tramples on the natural and legitimate liberties of citizens. Today, individual liberty as a permissive or allocated value can be considered “state-light,” while order and equality are “state-heavy” in requiring state intervention to achieve intended results. (The “rights” that are usually stipulated in authoritarian and totalitarian state constitutions are creations of the MSNS, with

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limited recognition of “natural rights,” and so can be easily abridged or terminated by state action.) This intervention usually requires coercion in the form of persuasion, confiscation, punishment, reward, and taxation. Order has been the primary value of historical states, while equality and liberty are modern and are possible only after the consolidation of order. All three are political values central to modern claims of sovereignty, and critical to the allocation of the state’s human security resources. Encompassing these values, claimed sovereignty [Sc] denotes the scope of state claims over citizens/subjects, their property, and thus their means of self-protection,5 as well as claims of territorial jurisdiction. Historically, these claims – and the mix of order, equality, and liberty – have been dynamic and interlinked. For example, for a state to maximize order, it will decrease liberty by placing citizens in legal categories for administration (three classes in Communist systems, and sexual, ethnic, and racial categories in the contemporary United States). Likewise, liberty declines with state-forced enhancement of equality. Order and equality are not naturally compatible, though the ancient Chinese Legalists tried to construct an egalitiarian order with a single absolute monarch ruling over a population consisting of interchangeable farmers and warriors. Paradoxically, the enforcement of absolute equality destroys the possibility of a stable egalitarian order, since some persons will be naturally less passive than others, and will inevitably run afoul of enforced egalitarianism. Dissidents through criticism, and the Soviet apparachik beneficiaries of dachas and beryozka through their hypocrisy, shared in dismantling the myth of Communist equality. Or, in a presumably better future, the anarchist vision of freedom plus equality, could emerge when humanity has shed its defects of selfishness – the Elysian condition, where the state is unnecessary and order is established by universal consent and compliance. In the real world, the claims of egalitiarian priorities have rested on an enforced order, which paradoxically, undermines that equality. Michael Polanyi considered the possibility of “spontaneous order in society” as when human beings are allowed to “interact with each other on their own initiative – subject only to laws which uniformly apply to all of them” (Boaz 1997: 226). It is not difficult to imagine how easily some individuals, more avaricious or resourceful than others, could accumulate goods and power which would undermine any pretense of equality. Values comprise a socio-political wish list – preference for predictability and stability (order), fairness and justice (equality), and minimum state interference in personal affairs (liberty). However, by working through human security Formulas One and Two, the final three formulas demonstrate how the values are actually implemented. By actualizing sovereignty (Formula Three) the state establishes order, existing with an intensity that varies according to the stipulated factors. Where Formula Four provides an approximation of the average human security per citizen, this can also be interpreted as the ideal of equality. As the average degree of human security approaches actual distribution, citizens become equal in other respects. If there were a Gini chart that measured human security, the coefficient would equal “1.000” of an absolutely equal state.

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The theory of human security: summary and conclusion The first four formulae of human security rest on a relatively measurable output – the decrease in violent deaths of individuals and the prolongation of human life expectancy. Personhood and citizenship add protections to individuals in an often violent world. By accomplishing a higher degree of human security than most individuals can achieve through their own efforts, and more than persons in a stateless cooperative society, the MSNS claims more resources and more obligations from its subjects/citizens in the name of fundamental protection. These claims of sovereignty have historically been the engine of legitimizing state expansion, both at the expense of other states and in diminishing the natural and social liberty of subjects/citizens. Formula Five approximates the dimensions of a state’s aspirations, within the limitations imposed by claims of other states. The vector of three values encompassed in [Av] describes the configuration of citizenship the state confers on its population as well as the implied relationship between state and citizens. Formulas One and Two address human security in the pre-state context – the protections man brings into the state, and which must be accomodated or modified by the addition of state protections. Formula Three calculates the power – denoted as actualized sovereignty – available to the state, and depends upon the human security of individual/persons prior to the state. Formula Four delivers a raw approximation of human security per citizen. This average value will be skewed by [Av] in Formula Five, since human security resources will be allocated according to where citizens are located in the state’s hierarchy. We have suggested that the greater the gap between actualized sovereignty and claimed sovereignty, the more likely is conflict. When the gap is relatively small, a state can be expected to remain stable, but when that gap increases to a certain intensity, major internal conflicts will occur, and in extreme cases, the state will collapse. In the following chapters assessing historical and contemporary China, the notions of actualized sovereignty and claimed sovereignty are central to diagnosing evolution of the Chinese MSNS: actualized sovereignty reflects the historical record of how Chinese states were established, maintained and ended; claimed sovereignty refers to how these states designated their authority over territory and subjects/citizens. An identifiable pattern of claimed sovereignty will be denoted as a meta-constitution. When the Chinese state is viewed from the perspective of the theory of human security, from our analytical “mountaintop,” certain features emerge. At least eight distinctive meta-constitutions can be identified since 221 BC. The most durable was the ICS2, established on the ruins of its predecessor, the QLS1, and which dominated most of the historical period. It was challenged and briefly replaced by the reformer Wang Mang, and again nearly defeated by the Taiping Tianguo in the mid-nineteenth century. But the durability of ICS2, even as a template for smaller kingdoms during interdynastic periods, remains an impressive monument in the state-building history of the world. In twentieth-century China, there has been a relative proliferation of meta-constitutions – RNS3, GRS4, SCS5,

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MCS6, DMS7, and TIS8. Contention among these meta-constitutions has been a major factor in China’s modern “incomplete sovereignty” – the continuing failure to close the gap between actualized sovereignty and claimed sovereignty. The theory of human security is a useful analytical tool to understand the continuum of institutions that embrace and protect the biological existence of humans through society and state. By examining the past web of security institutions that evolved through evolution and history we can develop new and better tools, policies, and institutions to remedy breakdowns of old patterns and confront new challenges, especially in the non-West. The combination of autonomous individuals, family-centric society, and the democratic modern sovereign nationstate has proven to be an effective protector of human security in history, and the case for new institutions to replace them awaits proof. World security today – despite threats of terrorism and nuclear proliferation – is perhaps as high as it has ever been (though far from a perfect Elysium) in terms of ● ● ● ● ●

absolute numbers of people who are enjoying longer and more secure lives; relative control over mass destruction threats; rising living standards, life expectancy and health; increasing science and technology to enhance life; and political stability. Human security threats are also present:

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proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD); ignorance, superstition, and disease; pockets of hunger and famine; depletion of environment and natural resources; persecution of religious and political dissidents; misallocation of scarce resources to military spending; terrorism and political violence; natural disasters, including global warming; and dehumanization of man through science, mass culture, commerce, and sexual exploitation.

A major challenge today is to further enhance human security for those whose lives are vulnerable or marginal, and this may be done by refining and improving those institutions that have verifiably done more good than harm, and by modifying or abandoning those which have done more harm than good. Only then may it be wise to devise new institutions to ameliorate global human security deficits.

6

Actualizing imperial sovereignty in ancient China

One of mankind’s most durable creations passed out of existence when old China’s imperial system of government was submerged under a tide of republicanism in the early years of the present century. No other government that persisted into the twentieth century could claim comparable longevity; for its history as an institutional system stretched back almost unbroken through dynastic changes, foreign invasions, and social and cultural upheavals into the third century before Christ. In the long perspective of history, moreover, it is probable that no government ever served its people more effectively as a guardian of social stability, territorial integrity, and national dignity. Despite its rapid and complete deterioration at the end, the Chinese – Nationalist and Communist alike – have not ceased recalling its glories with a wistful nostalgia, and many have consistently lamented its passing. (Hucker 1961: 1)

The Qin state – QLS1 The traditional Chinese state was a remarkable political construction and provided human security to hundreds of millions over multiple centuries. Even more remarkable is how its beginning gave little indication of the stability that would follow. Before ICS2 was established, the multi-state Warring Kingdoms (Zhanguo) fragments had to be bonded into a single state. The Qin state (221–206 BC) ended the old system of weak center and hereditary kingdoms, and established a centralized state template under a single emperor. Qin actualized the sovereignty of the Chinese empire in a manner that set the pattern for subsequent dynasties. The origin of the first Chinese state is wrapped in myths, which are gradually replaced by credible history through archaeology and philology. There was no accepted epic of creation, divine intervention, or a single cultural hero that established a Chinese people for all time. Rather legends tell of a series of innovators who introduced the arts and techniques of civilization – writing, agriculture, benevolent government, rituals, music, medicine, and irrigation. Principles of dynastic rule were part of the legendary legacy, and the first recorded dynasty, the Shang, fought wars against non-Chinese peoples. The succeeding Zhou dynasty had non-Han origins, and first allied with, then overthrew (1122 BC), the Shang.

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From earliest times, external military threats to dynasties came from the west and northwest.1 The Duke of Zhou suppressed a rebellion and centralized the various small kingdoms into administrative districts, but the Zhou political order was not a completely unified central state. It has been characterized as feudal, with kinship, rather than contract-like rights and obligations of the European variety. By the ninth century, the feudal lords were fighting among themselves, and nonHan raiders harassed the frontiers. The western capital city was overrun and sacked, and the Zhou moved their capital to Loyang – starting the era of the Eastern Zhou and ending the effectiveness of the Zhou monarchy. The office of Ba (hegemon) was set up to maintain order, and a conference of the major states was held in 681 BC to preserve the peace. By the fifth century, wars became increasingly destructive, and various feudal lords sought to unify fragments of the Zhou Empire. In warfare, infantry and cavalry replaced the aristocratic chariots, while crossbows and iron weapons made fighting more lethal. Nevertheless, during the Spring and Autumn Period (770–475 BC) of warfare, population increased to over fifty million, and new lands were opened to agricultural settlement. In 221 BC, the state of Qin transformed its kingdom into empire by intrigue and conquest, though its rule lasted only sixteen years. During the Spring and Autumn period, there were around 170 political entities in China, with a number existing as independent states. Agriculture had become more productive, populations expanded, and warfare changed from chariots to massed infantry, along with introduction of the crossbow. The old Zhou feudal empire had collapsed before 256 BC, with separate states guarding their frontiers with military and customs barriers, forging alliances, and making war and peace with one another. Sophisticated administration and centralization enabled an expanding bureaucracy to control society through codified law, registration of population and land, statistical records, and penal law. In Qin, the Legalists gave advice to the ruler on organizing the bureaucratic state. Land was organized into new administrative units – the jun and xian (county). The early Qin state began on the northwestern frontier – a region populated with non-Han Jung people, with whom Qin struggled. During 361–338 BC, the Legalist general Shang Yang introduced a series of reforms which reduced the power of hereditary landholders. His reforms emphasized law to strengthen the power of the state, enforced group responsibility, established a hierarchy based on merit, and aimed to create a unified and powerful state drawing on an industrious peasantry and disciplined army. Intellectual speculation and mercantile activities were proscribed. In 325 BC the Duke of Qin assumed the title of king (wang). After conquering present-day Sichuan to secure their southern flank, the rulers of Qin fought and acquired the kingdoms to the east, culminating in declaration of the Qin dynasty. Some of the factors that contributed to Qin conquest included (Twitchett 1986: 45–50): ●

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Geostrategic – the home territory was secure against invasion as long as the strategic passes were held. Economic – irrigation made the land productive, and the state controlled production and distribution.

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Manly virtues – hard work and military prowess were stressed over wealth and intellectual achievement. Freedom from the cultural traditions of the Zhou state. Longevity of the rulers – assassinations and attempted assassinations by opponents of the Qin state sought to halt its expansion by regicide that would interrupt the confluence of personal and national ambitions to conquer the empire. Administrative reorganization.

Similar to the Zhou, Qin emerged on the periphery of an already identifiable Chinese civilization, having absorbed elements of non-Chinese groups. Characterized as a cruel and ruthless emperor whose dynasty deservedly collapsed in the second generation, Qin Shi Huangdi went far in his policies of de-feudalization and centralization of the empire. In a few years, he established the foundation for over twenty-one centuries of dynastic rule by destroying the old kingdoms which had inherited territories of Zhou. Though characterized as an epitome of ruthlessness, he was the true political founder of the unified Chinese state – a fact that Mao recognized in his homage poem to China’s political heroes. Qin Shi Huangdi established the territorial and infrastructural foundations of the traditional empire. Under his direction, General Meng Tian consolidated the walls of the northern states into the Great Wall to defend against nomadic raiders. Canals were repaired and constructed, and a network of roads built so that the emperor could inspect his empire and troops sent quickly to any trouble spot (Hucker 1975: 44). Qin standardized coinage and measures, and collected the weapons of defeated armies for melting. Written Chinese was purged of variants, and the seal style of calligraphy taken as standard, suppressing up to 25% of pre-Qin script. Without reform, several regional orthographies might have remained, making cultural unity more difficult. Philosophical disputation was outlawed, and hundreds of scholars reportedly executed so that no dissent or questioning of laws and commands would be tolerated. For the Qin emperor, unification was pacification plus standardization – a campaign against centuries of local peculiarities and privileges, presaging the French Revolution two millennia later. Qin sovereign authority derived from two sources based on outcomes rather than claims. First, harsh laws and harsher punishments intimidated subjects into submission. Transgressions were punished with torture and execution or service in convict labor on the many public works projects of the new dynasty. Second, after several centuries of warfare, the benefits of peace, order, and growing prosperity were plainly a benefit to those who kept their heads down (and kept their heads on!) and stayed away from law. In the period preceding Qin unification, many settlers had immigrated to the state of Qin, attracted by fertile lands and protection from wars, despite its harsh laws and demands for military service. The price of tranquility was high, and thousands of subjects were branded and sentenced to virtual slave labor, creating resentment and opposition that led to the overthrow of the Qin dynasty in 206 BC.

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The Legalist foundation of the Qin Empire was a technique of control more than a philosophy upon which to organize stable government. Formulated by Shang Yang, Han Feizi and others, it reduced men to simple terms, based on motivations to fear of punishment and desire for reward. By grasping these “two handles” and using rigorous laws, a ruler could subordinate his subjects, his ministers, and even his own family to serving him and the state. The goal of the state was wealth, tranquility, and glory of the dynasty, but at the expense of thought, innovation, freedom, and religion. His may have been the world’s first totalitarian state, and Legalism provided the method for its maintenance. Legalism addressed the management of the population so that people were the major source of state power. Geography was also critical to economic and military power. Qin was located in the western part of China, and enjoyed natural frontiers that enhanced security, but also allowed easy access to the eastern plains. Forests and fertile farmland enabled Qin to accumulate large grain reserves necessary for extended military campaigns, as well as lumber for construction and weapons. By ending the plague of internecine war, unification of the empire improved chances of life expectancy – human security. Chancellor Li Si established tight Legalist control and centralization of the state. Qin Empire frontiers were secured and the public works program of canal construction opened new lands for farming – notably in the south – with a positive effect on the human environment. Unification of orthography facilitated communication. Qin established the foundation of subsequent Chinese dynasties, although it was demonized as the antithesis of virtue by Confucians: the Legalist/Confucian symbiosis evolved during the Han, with administrative controls at the top merging into self-administered behavioural standards below, that gave to the Chinese state the necessary combination of firmness and flexibility that enabled it to survive. Whether one admires the Qin achievement or not, it must be recognized for what it was: a transformation of the face of China so great both quantitatively and qualitatively that it deserves the name “revolution” even though it was imposed from the top, not forced from below. This, rather than the transfer of political power brought about by the anti-Qin peasant rebellions, was the true revolution of ancient China. Indeed, it was China’s only real revolution until the present century. (Twitchett 1986: 90) Combining human security theory with the first recognizable state in China, we see that Formula Three specifies the elements which comprise actual sovereignty [Sa], and the QLS1 correlates are as detailed in the following paragraph. The personal human security [HSp] of Qin’s subjects, both before and after the unification of empire, was oriented to a single state by coercion and fear, as well as the loss of alternative sanctuaries from oppression and exploitation. By exercising authority to furthest frontiers, Qin eliminated other choices, except for outlawry, as a means of livelihood. Obligation [Oc] under Qin Legalism was reduced to soldiering and production, using punishments and rewards to motivate

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men as simple stimulus and response mechanisms. In practice, life was not so stark, judging from the rapid resurrection of pre-Qin diversity after Qin demise. During the short Qin dynasty, the intense program of public works enhanced performance of the political economy [Ep]. The simple measure of dictating the axle length of carts increased road efficiency by insuring that cartwheels followed specified tracks instead of each vehicle making its own way, rearranging the mud and deepening the resulting quagmires during the wet seasons. Standardized coinage, writing, and weights also reduced barriers to trade. Canal and roadbuilding, with increased border security, broadened the scope of trade, and enabled shipment of grain to the capital. The scope of Qin political knowledge [Kp] was the product of centuries of reflection on war, involving alliances, ruses, negotiations, and strategies. These were recounted in works including the Zhan Guo Ce ( ), a renowned ancient Chinese historical work on the Warring States Period compiled in late Western Han Dynasty by Liu Xiang ( ). It recounts the strategies and political views of the period. Even more famous in the West is Sunzi’s Art of War ( ), whose chapters addressed topics such as “Laying plans,” “Attack by stratagem,” “Terrain,” and “The use of spies.” The political knowledge of Qin, necessitated by an environment where war and preparation for war were paramount, understandably was derived from authority as command and administration as mobilization. With no more enemies to defeat, Qin turned the political knowledge of establishing a huge garrison state at peace with all except lawbreakers and dissidents, who were dealt with as enemies of the state. (We can note Qin’s pre-modern tri-class division of “enlightened” elites, productive masses, and enemies of the state, which totalitarians of the last century revived.) As this political knowledge was applied to state-building, its applicability was limited to winning and consolidating dynastic hegemony, but failed to confer long-term legitimacy. Harsh laws imposed obedience but not reciprocal obligation on subjects, and once the Qin founder died, his dynasty – but not the fact or ideal of dynastic empire – collapsed, waiting to be transformed into a new type of sovereignty under the Han dynasty. The formidable Qin army was the primary instrument of conquest. The Qin military [M] was the sharp edge of the Qin kingdom that overwhelmed and destroyed rivals and enforced Qin rule under its empire. Its organization was imposed on the civilian population with draconian discipline and heavy punishment for violation. Rewards for valor motivated energetic action. The kingdom of Qin was run practically as an army, and factionalism was minimized. The emperor was absolute commander, and demanded single-minded loyalty from his ministers and generals. Treason was punished without mercy. However, enforcement of strict laws created an ever enlarging criminal population, who were set to work on the vast public projects of the empire. Escapees from the work gangs and levies formed outlaw groups who, facing death if recaptured, had nothing to lose by joining rebels. Potential political friction [PF] remained subsurface during the lifetime of the First Emperor, and broke into open rebellion after his death – even destroying his elaborate tombs.

82 Imperial sovereignty in ancient China In a series of military campaigns that destroyed rival kingdoms and incorporated their territories and populations into his own, the king of Qin transformed external relations [ER] among equals into uniform domination of empire. The Qin kingdom had been on the geographical, ethnic, and cultural frontier of China, and its imperial policies followed traditional patterns of military protection against nomads, assimilation of those who adopted Han agrarian ways, expanded frontier boundaries, and “using barbarians to control barbarians” – that is, playing off rival tribes and kingdoms to prevent their alliances and to weaken their ability to concentrate offensives against China. With the consolidation of actual sovereignty [Sa], the empire mobilized labor – slave, convict, and peasant – to construct canals, palaces, tombs, roads, and the Great Wall. The QLS1 drained human and material resources from society for the sake of what we would today term national security. The obligation of subjects to maintain the state was increased, and frontier military forces were strengthened. The coefficient of Political Friction [PF] under the Qin was lowered by the sheer weight of central control. Finally, with the extermination of rival opposition kingdoms, external relations [ER] were transformed to frontier defence. Key items of the state order established under QLS1 became the pattern for the subsequent ICS2, to be emulated in form, though not in spirit, by dynastic founders for over two thousand years. Once ensconced on the imperial throne, the emperor would rule with absolutism nearly as thorough as Qin, but formulated claimed sovereignty [Sc] in terms of humanist Confucianism. The Qin dynasty flourished for a brief sixteen years, and the last four witnessed rebellion and rapid acceleration of political friction [PF] once the First Emperor died. He left a monumental accomplishment and a legacy of actual state sovereignty [Sa] that persisted for over two millennia, within dynastic fluctuations. The Qin pattern of military conquest and consolidation became the first-stage model for subsequent dynasties, accompanied by violence in the beginning and during collapse. Relative peace and human security reigned when strong dynasties dominated, although the interregnum between the Han and the Sui was also moderately peaceful, once the fighting over the remnants of the Han subsided. We now turn to the second great dynasty, the Han, and examine how it maintained sovereignty for over four centuries.

The imperial state – actualizing Han sovereignty Revolts broke out when the first Qin emperor died in 210 BC After civil war, the Han dynasty (206 BC– AD 220) emerged, and retained much of the Qin administrative structure. But the Han also modified centralized rule in setting up vassal principalities in some areas to reward dynastic supporters, allowing the problems of pre-Qin feudalism to resurface, albeit based initially on a form of merit – loyalty and service to the dynastic founder. Nearly two-thirds of Han territory was divided into wangguo (kingdoms) and functioned as quasi-independent states. The new Han aristocracy proved dangerous to the throne, evidenced by the failed Revolt of the Seven Kings in 154 BC. An imperial decree in 127 BC required equal

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division of kingdoms among a deceased king’s sons and thus ended primogeniture. In 106 BC, the empire and the kingdoms were divided into thirteen circuits, each headed by an imperially appointed Inspector. Rebellions and conspiracies resulted in extinguishing many noble families and titles by 86 BC. The harsher aspects of the previous dynasty were modified, and Confucian ideals of government were introduced as the state creed. Familistic hierarchy returned to state and society after Qin unification and collapse, and Confucian scholars received prominent status in the civil service where examinations were initiated. Two centuries of Han stability were interrupted by the reformer, Wang Mang (AD 9–24), who was overthrown and the Han restored, which ruled for two more centuries to AD 220 when it collapsed from internal rivalries and financial problems. Nearly four centuries of disunity and warlords followed the Han collapse. With the decline of political order, there was an influx of non-Chinese who were largely assimilated into Chinese culture over several hundred years – analogous to the contemporaneous acculturation of tribes in Europe during and after the decline of the Roman Empire, with Christianization the agency in the West. In China, the spread of Buddhism filled the spiritual vacuum left by the absence of empire, as Christianity had in Europe. During this period, memory of the great Han Empire was preserved, and many of its institutions were retained in various kingdoms so there was no decisive or revolutionary break with the past. Alien states were set up through infiltration and conquest, and most had been previously sinicized. Until the Sui, no dynastic house ruled a unified empire, and there was increasing schism between north and south. The Han era established the paradigmatic ICS2, exhibiting several characteristics: ●

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Meritocracy increasingly replaced birth or ascription as the key criterion of political position. The founder of a dynasty demonstrated and increased his ability to rule by defeating his enemies and organizing the state in a way that would bring peace and prosperity. His successors were ideally selected on the basis of perceived ability to continue the dynasty. The hereditary principle among Chinese below the ruling house was less and less effective over centuries. Each dynasty often had a violent beginning and a turbulent end – a few ended with only a whimper. Even during periods of peace and prosperity, revolts and wars occurred and were usually repressed with full force of the state, so perhaps the best that can be said is that actualized sovereignty of the ICS2 was a relative and variable condition, with [PF] constantly challenging its hegemony. The ICS2 mirrored Chinese Confucian society, with its emphasis on a cult of the family. Ancestral worship imbued clan progenitors with supernatural powers, but most important were the virtues and values that were familyderived and governed individual behavior. These became the guiding values of Confucianism as well, and included filial piety, loyalty, benevolence, and wisdom. Applied to the state, these virtues provided a seamless connection among individuals, family members, and the ruling dynasty.

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Imperial sovereignty in ancient China Law and the commands of the emperor, which had been established as the first principle of the Qin dynasty [QLS1], were imposed from above, rather than generated out of social and customary practices, as in the Roman Empire and in subsequent Western legal traditions. Under Qin, law had been heavily weighted as punishment, and continued to have this disposition in subsequent eras. Imperial law remained an instrument of rule throughout the ICS2.

The earlier Qin had created a sovereign order which was modified by Han, but failed to eliminate the family-based feudal principles which had permeated statecraft of the previous millennium. The founder of ICS2, Han Gaozu turned to the gentry to furnish officials for the new state, and these gentry families were often branches of the Zhou nobility, although others were of non-noble families who had become wealthy and acquired land. The wangguo aristocracy might have provided a counterbalance to the gentry, but they instead collaborated with them and intrigued to limit central power. By the first decade BC, excessive power of the landowners threatened the state, peasant revolts broke out, and Imperial Regent Wang Mang seized the throne, declaring the New (Xin) dynasty. He embarked on a program of radical reform, claiming that all land belonged to the state and initiating distribution among the peasants – forbidding purchase or sale. With the gentry in control of the bureaucracy, Wang had few officials to carry out his program. Peasants again revolted, and were put down by the gentry and supporters of the Han dynasty (restored in AD 25). Once the Qin had established imperial sovereignty with the throne at the center, the military to enforce imperial rule, a bureaucracy to carry out state civil operations, and the frontiers secured, the remainder of Chinese state history remained within those broad parameters. A major difference between QLS1 and ICS2 was the role of the gentry in mediating between state and society. Qin aggressively built a national transportation infrastructure that made movement of armies, officials and grain revenues more efficient, while strengthening the central government. The Han, while excoriating its predecessor, took advantage of that infrastructure, and encouraged commerce and foreign trade, with paper, porcelain, and silks penetrating even the Roman Empire. Qin Shi Huangdi had tried to destroy Confucian political knowledge, but many texts (written on bamboo strips) were hidden away and restored after his demise. Other texts were lost or remained only in fragments, so restoration was sometimes erroneous through miscopying. The Han instituted a higher degree of equality of opportunity than had existed during the period prior to the Qin. Liu Bang (Han Gaozu), of commoner origin, defeated the last of the old aristocrats, his one-time ally Xiang Yu. He overthrew the Qin social order and turned to the gentry to staff his bureaucracy. Peasant revolts remained a perennial problem through the ICS2, and were stamped out with ferocity. Sometimes led by gentry, if unchecked they could threaten and overturn a dynasty. Politics was a Darwinian struggle, and a successful rebel could become emperor. In terms of human security, a growing inequality of

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life-protecting resources within a state could redound in the form of rebellion against established authority.2

The Sui-tang imperial state The fifteenth-century novel, Romance of Three Kingdoms, opens with a summary of the dynastic cycle: “The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide” ( , , ). Each dynasty with unifying ambitions returned to the general pattern of actualized sovereignty established by the Qin and modified by Han, and had to deal with the two constant antagonists of that sovereignty – northern border nomads and domestic gentry. Vigorous dynastic founders were sometimes followed by equally active successors, but most often were not, and the dissipation of authority and power combined with external factors – natural disasters, military usurpation, gentry greed, nomadic invasion, financial mismanagement, and corruption usually reduced imperial power. Integral to China’s state evolution were recurring periods of fragmentation, which also produced socioeconomic transformation and assimilation of new thought, technology, religion, and ethnic groups. Separated by geography, though not isolated, from other centers of civilization (Europe, the Middle East, and India), the rise and fall of ICS2 dynasties was largely unconnected to events in other distant regions. The main lines of communication were through Central Asia, and the nomadic peoples who raided, settled, and assimilated on China’s frontiers also connected China with other parts of Eurasia. During dynastic interregna, the weakened or fragmented ICS2 was more vulnerable to external cultural influences and presented circumstances that allowed penetration of new ideas, technology, and groups, permitting or forcing Chinese society to adapt to new circumstances. These dynamics enabled ICS2 to reassert actualized sovereignty that took advantage of new institutions and resources, while rationalizing them in terms of reviving claims of the imperial mandate. Only in the late Qing was the relative separation of China from global state dynamics dissolved permanently, and a new dependency introduced which ended ICS2 sovereignty. The period following the Han dynasty was characterized by a high degree of disorder. The Han was the culmination of centuries of fusion of the Zhou feudal state and Qin centralization. When the Han collapsed, various regional potentates attempted to revive it, but the task remained unfinished. Several new factors had to be addressed: ●

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The diffusion of Buddhism eclipsed the dominance of Confucianism, and the building of temples and monasteries, along with control of land, reduced and diverted state revenues. Central Asian proto-Turkic groups entered Chinese (Han) territory and settled, sometimes setting up dynasties, and intermarrying with local Han. Wars, Qin de-feudalization, and Han centralization had weakened the old aristocratic families, resulting in circulation of elites – new men rose to power through government service, sometimes manipulating the throne for

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Imperial sovereignty in ancient China their clan and family benefit. Ambitious concubines, powerful empresses, and generals also became players in the large and small dynasties. Wars of expansion and defence stimulated warlordism during periods of imperial weakness. State insecurity multiplied during periods of fragmentation, with resulting human insecurity and greater reliance on family and clan.

Cultural traditions of previous dynasties persisted and inspired ambitious claimants to reunify the ICS2. From a human security standpoint, the absence of unified imperial sovereignty during these “dark ages” permitted an influx of Central Asian nomads into Chinese territory. Once settled, they often abandoned their nomadic ways and assimilated into Chinese society, or set up their own kingdoms, adopting some Chinese characteristics and administration. Imperial tradition, styles, and language provided powerful core beliefs and facilitated the Sui-Tang re-actualization of sovereignty through reconstruction of empire. The two-generation Sui dynasty (AD 581–617) had a sovereignty-actualizing career that paralleled the Qin conquest of empire, but unlike the Qin, the Sui revived and consolidated the Han pattern of ICS2 – a pattern that was conservative rather than revolutionary, and thus saved the Han meta-constitution from oblivion, and probably avoiding the European fate of permanent multi-state pluralism. The glory and fall of the Han roughly paralleled the experience of the Roman Empire. In the West, the influx of barbarian tribes and their conversion created dual identities – local/tribal and ecumenical Christian. Like their counterparts in China, the immigrants adapted to sedentary agricultural life. As in China, the unity and prosperity of past empire beckoned rulers to re-create a second Rome. The Byzantine Empire claimed to be Rome’s Christian successor, but was not able to subdue Western Europe as the Caesars had done. With the establishment of Charlemagne’s Holy Roman Empire in 800, a Western counterpart emerged – but was short-lived under Merovingian rule. Instead, the history of Western Europe travelled the road of competing nation-states. The explosion of Islam and its conquests around the Mediterranean introduced a third force, capturing Byzantium (Constantinople) in 1453. Post-Roman conditions of Europe were not replicated in China. First, Christian Rome, following Constantine’s conversion, became a fundamentally different state than pagan Rome.3 No longer was the emperor deified, nor the imperial cult subordinated to the state. An ecclesiastical hierarchy emerged as a separate order, so that St Augustine could describe the two cities – the Civitas Mundi and Civitas Dei. Two rival yet cooperative poles of political power weakened the empire, secularized the political order, and consigned it to a lower order, rooted in Civitas Diaboli – the city of unbelievers. Buddhism might have had the same effect in China, but did not. Introduced during the Han dynasty, Buddhism became popular during the post-Han period of fragmentation, with several local rulers adopting it as their state religion. After imperial reunification, Buddhism flourished under Sui and Tang. The Sui emperor utilized it to reinforce his own authority, especially among the “new Chinese” including assimilated nomads. Tang sponsored Buddhist expansion,

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but never surrendered the dominance of the old state cult of Heaven that accorded semi-divine status to the Son of Heaven. Buddhism was useful in reducing friction between the indigenous Han and the new settlers from Inner Asia. Temples and monasteries served as assimilating centers. Moreover, the Chinese empire had a head start over the Roman by centuries, even though the Zhou was never as centralized. The dominance of ethnic Han and their language established a principle of cultural hegemony that Rome lacked. The Greeks had established a splendid culture and the Romans borrowed heavily from it. Alexander the Great had in effect globalized Greek culture and learning; the Romans built upon the edifice and confirmed its superiority, while suppressing its political power. A renaissance in Greek learning, and modification of Christianity to accommodate this earlier strand of thought, including a Greek liturgy in the church, set the Eastern Roman Empire on a different course from the West. No such cultural rival existed to China. Buddhism had traveled over the Himalayas and had little political or cultural baggage that could not be subordinated to the existing Chinese meta-constitution – even when its scope was limited and fragmented. The North China Plain had been the core of the Han Empire and Chinese civilization, and after collapse of the Han dynasty, only 20% of the original Han population remained there. By the early fourth century, the core region was controlled by alien groups. The region of the Yangzi River alluvial plain received many immigrants from the north and prospered. Princes in the north aspired to unify all of the territory of the former Han Empire, and Turko-Mongol rulers organized their states along lines of traditional Chinese administration. The emperor of the Northern Wei built a formidable military force and ordered sinicization of his realm. These new dynasties claimed ancient Chinese legitimacy. The border dynasties established military colonies on the North China Plain, and the gentry implemented policies of restoring ancient productivity with regional granaries (Wright 1978: 30, 38). At the sub-state level, major changes were occurring in Chinese society. Social strains erupted into rebellion, though there was decreasing social friction in popular cultural substrata. Chinese increasingly became the language of popular communication, and Confucian values translated down into proverbs and maxims. The family culture of northern aristocrats was strongly influenced by the ways of the steppe peoples with whom they had intermarried for generations. Women were trained, and given more active roles in life than Chinese women. Northern women with nomadic forebears tended to be more open and independent – subtly changing the internal relations of the sexes within the family and even in the monarchy.

Sui unification and restoration of ICS2 The short-lived Sui dynasty represented the gateway through which Chinese government returned to traditional unified empire, after a lapse of nearly four centuries. Post-Han China had witnessed its own “dark ages” and the Sui brought

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it to an end. Yang Jian (605–617) reigned as Sui Yangdi, and established an empire that ruled over fifty million people. The centuries of fragmentation and unrestricted nomadic immigration subsided under the unifying Sui dynasty, which set the pattern for expanding culture and state to include and assimilate non-Chinese. Race or ethnicity was not a critical criterion of authority in the ICS2, as long as there had been a reasonable period of integration of the monarch’s ancestors and there was adequate evidence that he adhered to dominant Chinese values – especially those expressed in Confucianism. The founder of the Sui dynasty came from an old family that had married into the Turkic-Mongol elite, and he married a non-Chinese woman who became his major advisor and nearly co-equal on the throne. He was an aristocrat of a class “sustained by inherited wealth in land and peasants and by the presumption that members of their class would inevitably have a monopoly of all positions of power in society” (Wright 1978: 64). Yang Jian enacted a series of laws making the dynasty a revival of the Confucian political order, with government offices renamed in accordance with Rituals of Zhou. He seized power in the strategic area of Guan-Zhong, where Qin and Han had established their capitals. Sui unification was far from complete, and regional hostilities continued long after Yang Jian’s ascension to the throne. A major source of cleavage remained between the families of steppe ancestry and those of old agrarian regions. The Sui core group were typical northerners, ruthless men of action. Their Confucian learning was rudimentary and most were Buddhists. Sui revived meritocratic Han institutions as a way of countering the hereditary privilege which had been a part of the social landscape during four and a half centuries of disunity. A major challenge to the Sui was reform of local government where institutions were in decay, with increasing power of the military over civil officials, and proliferation of local units and numbers of officials. Sui reduced the number of prefectures, commanderies,4 and counties, and significantly increased state revenues in the process. Sui had to deal with the multiplication of local government units that had resulted in proliferation of officials, staggering expense of their salaries, low tax revenues, and oppression of peasants. This was characterized as “using nine shepherds for ten sheep.” Yang Jian followed the pattern of the monarch personally affecting change – as Confucius had directed in the Da Xue. He took an intimate interest in the strict application of merit standards to appointments and promotions. The merit principle was a necessary precursor to equality of outcome – achievement over ascription, but also one which affected the solidarity of the family. By stressing merit over hereditary principles in appointment, the emperor undercut and countervailed the notion that power resided in the great families, and that birth alone (ascription) entitled one to elite status. Merit shifted power to the emperor insofar as he could delegate power to his officials and that they would safeguard the interests of the ICS2 over those of their families. On the other hand, with the change from official appointment based on family merit to the criterion of individual learning, the great families of China had incentives to establish their own local schools and direct their resources to the cultivation of candidates for the

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examinations so that clans could reap the benefits from one of their own holding office. Chinese emperors tried to counter these inclinations by enforcing rules of avoidance – where officials would not be appointed in or near their place of origin to prevent collusion with relatives. In theory, the examination system also reduced the influence of wealth and power, which was unevenly distributed among the population and regions. The founder of the Ming dynasty found that appointments of officials were drawn almost exclusively from one region, and ordered a more representative sampling of the national population in his civil service, and later emperors sought to insure a similar fairness. Thus, the relatively meritocratic examination system was an instrument with egalitarian potential which also produced order by shifting relations among gentry clans from collaboration to competition. Sui Yangdi held annual celebrations to impress the local officials with the power and grandeur of the dynasty, and used the occasions to check on his public servants. He also personally visited localities, appointed itinerant inspectors and regular censors, and established an elaborate system of surveillance. “The system of recruitment, examination, appointment, and surveillance was far from perfect in its functioning, but it represents a bold and thoroughly ruthless effort to neutralize entrenched local privilege and to discipline local officials to be responsible only to the central government” (Wright 1978: 104). Trusted officials were given latitude in setting local policy, but always subject to imperial oversight – features adapted in later dynasties as well.

War, conquest and human security Actualization of sovereignty requires more than good governance. For centuries, dynastic consolidation had been the springboard for Chinese territorial expansion and consolidation – notably the reclaiming of lands held by previous empires and securing outlying frontiers. As noted in the human security theory, the military [M] and its deployment is the key force in actualized sovereignty [Sa]. Yang Jian inherited the territories of the Northern Zhou (557–588), and mobilized his kingdom’s resources for logistical support of campaigns against the house of Chen (557–588) in the lower Yangzi valley. He deployed his forces for a thousand miles along the river, crossing at the central section with an eight-pronged amphibious assault. To insure against future rebellion around the defunct Chen dynasty, Sui destroyed its capital, and forced Chen nobles and officials to move to the northwest. He treated the deposed monarch and officials with leniency. Taxes were suspended in the south for a decade, but resentment simmered and boiled into new revolts with fierce fighting, ending with Sui victory. With the defeat of Chen, Sui was reluctant to move his forces into the southern, more thinly-populated hinterland that extended to Canton, preferring to rule indirectly, and was helped by one Lady Qiaoguo (Ch’iao-kuo) who used her prestige and influence with her non-Han people to help establish Sui power in the south. Sui used her as a “formidable instrument” of indirect rule and peaceful transition, rewarding her family with titles and governorships (Wright 1978: 152–3).

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Family and state were intimately intertwined in the ICS2 – family politics was state politics. Yang Jian’s family had leaped from high ranking officials to imperial court involving intrigue, war, and murder. As emperor he feared conspiracy from his sons who wanted to replace him. Only Yang Guang avoided alienating both parents. To him fell the task of reconciliation with the south, and he used Buddhism as a common link between north and south,5 building Buddhist as well as Daoist temples, and patronizing the Confucian literati – policies that were successful insofar as there were no further major rebellions. Unlike the ill-fated Qin dynasty, the Sui founder had a competent successor who carried out his father’s vision, but soon overreached and threw the empire into a war against the Koreans. Yang Jian, similar to Qin Shi Huangdi, embarked on construction programs to link the regions by canals, making Loyang a second capital as a strategic hub of land and water transport for grain tribute. Construction of the Grand Canal provided reliable shipment of grain to the north, although later dramas and operas characterized the endeavor as allowing the emperor and his concubines a leisurely route to view the hibiscus of the south. Construction of the canals mobilized over a million men to work and permitted movement of men and supplies to areas of potential dissidence. What railways were to twentieth-century China, canals served the same political, military, and economic purposes in the ICS2 – to unify territory, penetrate remote regions, expedite food delivery to the capital or famine areas, supply armies, move troops, and extend the reach of government. Sui began as a dynasty of conquest, and imprudently overreached in their project to dominate East Asia. After defeat of the Chen dynasty, Sui struck the Turks in the west, seized new lands in the south, and captured the Liuqiu (Ryukyu) islands. The campaigns to conquer the Korean kingdom of Koguryo proved Sui’s undoing. The Sui campaign planned to retake the lands controlled by the great Han dynasty, and was otherwise successful. Peaceful relations with Japan were established, and in the northwest, the Great Wall was extended as protection against the eastern Turks. Sui policy was to maintain the Turks in submission when possible, and keep them divided against each other to prevent tribal alliances. Discovery of secret communications between the Turkish Khan and the King of Koguryo provoked Sui to attack the latter’s capital at Pyongyang in 612. Heavy losses forced withdrawal, and two more expeditions were sent at great expense and also failed. Sui Yangdi was obsessed with defeating Koguryo – a fatal flaw of an autocrat that ruined the dynasty. Natural disasters and rebellions occurred during the Korean wars, while Koguryo proved to have excellent strategists and strong defenses, despite Sui having convinced the Korean kingdom of Silla to open a second front. (Memories of an earlier obstinate Pyongyang regime that brought ruin on China no doubt affect contemporary strategy in Beijing – even today China’s sway goes as far as the Yalu-Tumen River borders and no further.)

Achievements of the Sui dynasty The relatively short-lived Sui dynasty restored the Han Empire’s frontiers (except for the Korean peninsula) and many of its institutions. The Sui had done more

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than forcibly unite the disparate fragments of post-Han China into an empire through conquest. The two-emperor dynasty had restored a single government to much of the far-flung territory once ruled by Qin and Han, and had transformed a cultural ecumene into a political state. Yang Jian had restored not only territory but also the Han meta-constitution, including hierarchical and centralized division of political responsibilities, primacy of the Son of Heaven, a bureaucracy of merit, the family as the basic unit of society, and public works to re-centralize the state. The Sui challenge of state-building differed from the Qin-Han in that the great influx of non-Chinese and their establishment of local power centers created rivals whose warrior abilities were formidable threats to agrarian settlements and the more effete elites of the south. Religion has often been a force transcending localism and tribalism. The Greeks halted their wars to hold the Olympic Games to honor common gods. The Roman version of Olympian religion, plus deified Caesars, offered a unifying force tolerant of local cults as long as they did not contradict the state’s preeminence. Constantine’s conversion overturned paganism with a less-tolerant Christianity, but gave imperial scope to the universal (catholic) church. Hinduism permeated India and gave a common identity to a population remaining culturally and linguistically diverse to this day. In America, Protestantism provided a common basis of the American Creed, according to Samuel Huntington (Huntington 2004). Islam unified the diverse tribes of Arabia, and spread across North Africa into southern France before it was stopped by Charles Martel at the battle of Poitiers. The conflict between Islam and Christianity extended over centuries, with historic Crusades and contemporary jihads punctuating occasional periods of uneasy coexistence. Buddhism spread into China and created a common bond between Chinese aristocrats, peasants, and Central Asian nomads, similar to how Christianity had integrated the old and new populations in Europe. Buddhism had a further effect on the nomadic warriors from Central Asia – domesticating them by building temples, giving them loyalties and responsibility to specific places, instilling in them a sedentary philosophy and greater respect for life, and offering a pantheon of compassionate deities and an ethics of mercy and compassion – antithetical to the tribal religions of the steppes. Buddhism later transformed the ravaging warriors of Tibet and Mongolia into theocracies over shepherds that facilitated their absorption into the Chinese empire over centuries. The Sui conquests and campaigns may also have spared China from the European fate of multi-state evolution – which produced centuries of increasingly devastating wars that culminated in the two World Wars of the past century. Only in recent years have the Europeans become mildly successful in unifying their diverse states into a single tentative entity. Perhaps if Charlemagne had expanded his Frankish kingdom over all Western Europe, had established a genuine successor to the Roman Empire, and had been succeeded by a long dynasty of able kings, Europe’s destiny would have been different. For one thing, the Constantine legacy had drained considerable sacred authority from any secular state, creating the universal Christian church, and leaving regional monarchies

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to deal with mundane matters. Chinese emperors, on the other hand, fused sacred and secular authority in their thrones, and acted as pontifical as well as imperial figures. No Buddhist pope or bishops existed to challenge Sui Yangdi or any ruling emperor. While inter-dynastic imperial China could be characterized as multi-state, most of these states either preserved or aspired to Sinitic culture – including written language, administration techniques, and the charisma that accrued to rulers who imitated the old imperial rituals. Christian rulers in Europe who sought to emulate the emperors of Rome in their quest for expanded power were blocked by the ecclesiastical ceiling – the Church had appropriated the sacred realm to itself, and could withhold its approval of any monarchy it opposed.6 The Protestant Reformation saw the revolt of national monarchies against the papal Catholic Church, and their resistance metastasized into plural nation-states claiming undivided sovereignty over subjects and religious orders. Spain and the Hapsburg empire fought to preserve the unity of Christendom, but national and monarchical Protestantism, reinforced by the scientific and geographical discoveries of a new world, outflanked old Europe and destroyed whatever unity remained to Christianity. In China, Sui demonstrated how the unified empire could be restored, but not how to maintain it. For that lesson, the Tang dynasty would serve as the Han to Sui’s (lighter) Qin-type unification. Compared to other major dynasties of ICS2, the Sui’s place in history is not stellar. Arthur Wright has argued that it should be otherwise. From the standpoint of actualizing imperial sovereignty, and rescuing China from a quasi-European fate of a new millennium of Warring Kingdoms, Sui was a remarkable turnaround, almost as critical as Qin’s unification. Wright describes the Sui period as a time of rapid change, sweeping away old institutions, and bringing new solutions to old, intractable problems. The Sui established institutions that became the framework of the Tang dynasty, and would be found in all subsequent dynasties. Vast territorial claims of ICS2 as tianxia (“all under heaven”) came under Sui control and were a legacy to the Tang dynasty. The political knowledge [Kp] of Sui was based on history as well as experience. The lessons of Qin’s overreach tempered Sui not to move too fast and too ruthlessly, or risk a vast scope of rebellion, although the second emperor ignored the advice in Korea. The Confucian literati studied and wrote ICS2 history, and advised the Sui emperors to follow the state patterns of the Western Han. Wright summarizes the roles played by the short-lived Qin (Ch’in) and Sui dynasties: But in the case of Ch’in and Sui, the succeeding great dynasties were the beneficiaries of harsh measures taken by their predecessors. The T’ang built on the foundations laid by the Sui, and the Han on those put down by the Ch’in. Thus the Sui gains in importance by being the “ground-clearer” for the great age of T’ang. (Wright 1978: 12–13)

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Tang (618–907) actualization of imperial sovereignty The Tang dynasty restored the Han ICS2 in key areas.7 The institutions of government initiated after Han precedent during the Northern and Sui dynasties reached maturity, including the advanced bureaucratic principles of recruitment and evaluation, while accommodating the hereditary claims of landowning families. The Tang founding family (Li) had intermarried with non-Chinese nobility, and traced lineage to a general of the Han dynasty (Hucker 1975: 140). Founding emperor Tang Taizong attacked Korea twice, and pushed frontiers as far as Afghanistan, while encouraging Confucian learning and education at home. His son married Lady Wu Zetian, who later took the throne and became China’s only female emperor. A subsequent heir to the throne, Tang Minghuang (Xuanzong) (712–756) revived some of Tang glory, but fell in love with consort Yang Guifei, who has been vilified as clouding the emperor’s judgment with disastrous results for the empire.8 Tibetan and Western Turk rebellions and Arab expansion, as well as breakaway kingdoms of Nanchao (in Yunnan) and the An Lushan uprising, weakened the central government and caused decline in Tang power. Buddhist dominance was eclipsed by a revival of Confucianism, and the merchant-led Huang Chao rebellion (875–884) further eroded the dynasty in the late ninth century (Hucker 1975: 146). The revival of the unitary empire under Sui reinforces validity of the dynastic cycle metaphor. Wright dismissed the idea that the cycle could be the “literal reenactment of similar sequences of events,” but nevertheless there are “certain patterns of recurrence.” The Qin unification of the empire was both a lesson and a warning to Sui – it demonstrated that a dynasty founded on harshness might achieve unity, but would not last. Indeed, its overthrow insured the legitimacy of the subsequent Han, which could then enjoy the fruits of the predecessor’s harsh rule. Political knowledge [Kp], or more specifically, political history, was critical in reassembling a unified China. Past actions and their consequences – including organizing imperial government, recruiting officials, deploying and commanding armies, planning and executing new transportation grids or reviving old ones, and centralization of power – comprised a body of knowledge that informed a new dynasty. Compared to the evolution of the European state system, with incessant fighting and a multitude of princely succession crises and wars, the disorder which punctuated transitions between Chinese dynasties was a price paid for the longer periods of (relative) peace, unity, and prosperity during the major dynasties. The keepers of historical political knowledge were hardly disinterested scholars, saw themselves as guardians of Confucian moral tradition, and thus exercised considerable latitude in writing and selecting history to provide guidance for a new dynasty. The Sui founder established his power in the North China plain, where dynasties had risen and fallen for nearly two millennia. Temples, ruins, tombs, and remnants of palaces reminded him of Han glories, but also of decline and destruction. Ancient rituals and styles of imperial procedure were available to

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new rulers, and reinforced the continuity of the Sui with the Han. “The past was known to the Sui leaders through an ancient and continuous tradition of written histories and works of other kinds: classics from the distant past, literary collections, legal and ritual codes, treatises and descriptive works on every subject of human interest” (Wright 1978: 14). The later fragmentation of dynastic empires was often accompanied by warlordism during periods of imperial decay, when central government lacked adequate force to impose control (sovereignty) and administration on provinces and regions. A strong military establishment [M] was necessary for actualizing sovereignty, but army formations were also sources of political friction [PF]. Military rulers emerged to protect their territory from rivals and enemies, while declaring nominal allegiance to the center. Often aided by geography that allowed defence of their territory during periods of weak central government, warlords exercised nearly sovereign authority. With prolonged central weakness, a military figure (e.g., Cao Cao, founder of the Wei dynasty (AD 220–265)) might declare himself emperor and proclaim a new dynasty. Or he could become protector of the throne and install his own choice. From the viewpoint of imperial subjects, it might not matter whether they paid taxes and corvée to a warlord or to an emperor, but the Han and Tang established high-water marks for stability and prosperity, as well as expansion of state territory. Warlordism, on the other hand, was unstable and illegitimate, with more frequent chaotic warfare, to the detriment of human security, and the ambitious regional militarist was tempted to expand his realm and establish a new dynasty. Indeed, the occurrence of warlordism was a symptom of state vulnerability and insecurity – a marker of a high [PF] coefficient – and only reunification could provide state security and sovereignty that had become the required umbrella for human security. The political fragmentation initiated in the Huang Chao rebellion continued as rival strongmen set up power bases, with Tang-style imperial institutions – the so-called southern Ten Kingdoms which defied the usurper of the Tang dynasty – Chu Wen, a follower of Huang Chao (Hucker 1975: 147). In the north, five dynasties rose and fell in fairly rapid succession. Their conflicts for supremacy were overshadowed by the rise of the proto-Mongol Khitan which extended control into modern Hebei province. For the contemporary observer, it was clear that China had entered a new period of disunity with little prospect of reunification in the short run.

The Ming dynasty (1368–1644) Chinese history did repeat itself in some broad outlines. The collapses of the Han and Tang dynasties opened Chinese territory to external raids, invasions and migrations, while short-lived regional dynasties claimed succession to the imperial mantle. The aesthetically-advanced Song dynasty failed to restore either the lands or the prestige of the Tang, and succumbed to Mongolian conquest. The

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Mongols established a fully-foreign Yuan dynasty, and killed off, co-opted or exiled the traditional elites, with the result that its Ming successor did not have to deal with many remnants of the old aristocracy.9 On the other hand, as Hucker noted, recovery was led by men of the lowest social classes, “devoid of roots in the traditional high culture” (Hucker 1978: 1). Deterioration of Mongol rule has been explained in terms of the dynastic cycle, although it was linked to the larger dynamics of the Eurasian empire, which saw decline after the early great Khans. The Chinese histories recorded symptoms of dynastic corruption, and a traditional pattern was imposed on dynastic fates. The Mongols were foreign usurpers, rather than in the native imperial lineage, and were thus a special case. From a globalist perspective, the Yuan brought together Europe and Asia under a single dominion for the first time since Alexander the Great or Rome, and destroyed their respective isolation forever. The modern Chinese nationalist perspective emphasizes the oppression of Chinese under the Yuan, their intrigues and incompetence. The Qing, the last foreign-imposed dynasty, accepted many Chinese values and institutions, even though they maintained a separate ethnic identity, including Manchu as one of the two languages of administration and the northeast provinces as an exclusive homeland. The trigger of anti-Yuan rebellion was the government’s massive Huai basin flood relief and control project in 1351, involving conscription of millions of Chinese peasants. Mongol grip on China was slipping, as rebels took control of the Yangzi River, and in 1368, ousted the last Yuan emperor. Full control of Chinese territory was not complete until 1390. The new dynasty, founded by the commoner Zhu Yuanzhang ( ) retained the Mongolian system of government and adapted its autocratic network. Without participation of the semi-feudal landed class, Ming rule faced few internal challenges. The civil service meritocracy could not challenge the emperor, since their existence and privilege increasingly depended upon patronage and support from the throne. They wielded considerable moral authority, and were vital in state administration, but had little of the local political and economic power of pre-Yuan elites. Following the Mongol pattern of choosing a dynasty name based on ideology rather than family name, Zhu called his dynasty Ming, meaning “bright.” The new emperor styled himself Ming Taizu, established the capital at Nanjing and set out to restore the patterns of Tang and Song. However, “the Ming founder had little choice but to adapt the Yuan governmental apparatus that was ready at hand during the busy years of his rise to power. Thereafter, he gradually reshaped it into an unprecedented structure that was distinct from both its Yuan and TangSung antecedents” (Hucker 1978: 33). The Ming emperor refined the Mongol hierarchy of surveillance, which consisted of a system of censors to watch the civilian and military personnel at all levels. In 1380, the emperor took steps to concentrate state power in his own hands, and executed his senior chief councillor (Hu Weiyong) on charges of plotting to start a new dynasty. A purge of the upper civil service followed, and the emperor abolished the upper echelon of

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government institutions, including the Secretariat, Chief Military Commission, and Censorate (Hucker 1978: 41). After Ming Taizu’s government reorganization, he was the lone coordinator of twelve Ministries, and his government was structured in a way that no single appointee could gain control over any of the three major hierarchies: administrative, surveillance, or military (Hucker 1978: 43), which was also an arrangement of great inefficiency. These changes required creation of a new ruling class – what the Mongols had not destroyed, the Ming purges completed. A new national university was established to train administrators, but the examination system was a more common route for recruitment of officials, though regional quotas were established to prevent favoritism by examiners. Recruitment to the civil service moved to meritocracy, drawing on a broader reservoir of talent than previous gentry monopolization. This increasing equality of opportunity, although excluding women and certain occupations, made the autocratic monarchy more secure by opening royal positions of power and responsibility to more aspirants than times when the landed aristocracy had that exclusive privilege. To insure security of the dynastic throne, Ming initiated a thorough-going control of society. Maximizing order and possibly reducing social friction by seeking to regularize social status among subjects, the Ming set up a hereditary registration system for artisans and military garrisons. In non-Han areas, tribal chiefs were given local authority. The emperor also had to manage family relations – an area that more than a few times in Chinese history had proven to be a source of state endangerment. The empress convinced Ming Taizu to learn the lessons of history and not allow imperial relatives by marriage to play any part in government. Imperial princes were ordered to take consorts and concubines from the families of relatively low-ranking military officers in order to avoid future meddling by powerful families. The emperor agreed to separate family and state: “Although empresses and concubines are patterns of motherhood to the whole empire, they must not be permitted to take part in administrative matters” (Hucker 1978: 53). Dynastic longevity required strong foundations, and Ming Taizu sought to insure that the social order be stabilized. He abolished slavery and established the baojia system, which combined mutual responsibility, education, and surveillance throughout the realm. Local communities were also given a measure of selfgovernment, and religious groups came under state control. Land was re-registered and tax rates adjusted. Rich families were moved to the new capital at Nanjing, in order to improve surveillance against conspiracy. Large numbers of workers and artisans were impressed for labor on extensive reclamation projects – although there was always a risk of rebellion when such projects became too onerous, as had happened in the Qin and late Yuan dynasties. Supplying military reinforcement of the frontiers was resolved by a semi-free-market solution: Salt merchants, as beneficiaries of a government monopoly, were required to deliver grain to the frontier garrisons, and they responded by organizing their shipments in an efficient manner. According to Hucker, “In general, his domestic administration policies taken all together created a remarkably stable society and

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facilitated substantial economic growth by the end of his long reign in 1398” (Hucker 1978: 62). In foreign affairs, Ming avoided the costly adventures of Sui. Nonetheless, the first Ming emperor attacked and brought Xinjiang under control. He warned his successors not to wage war without good cause, and listed fifteen states that should not be invaded (Hucker 1978: 64). To avoid collaboration with existing or potential enemies, and also to prevent technology or strategic intelligence transfer, Chinese were forbidden to go abroad except on official business. For all the benefits he brought to the ICS2, the Ming founder was a cruel tyrant who executed hundreds of his own officials and who favored landowners. No doubt the lessons of history of previous dynasties had refined government and dynastic security. By the mid-fifteenth century, the Ming state had stabilized, and extreme centralization of the monarchy was modified, giving the dynasty nearly three centuries of sovereignty. The Ming faced princely rebellions, foreign wars, and peasant revolts, but population increases demonstrated a high degree of human security for hundreds of millions of Chinese and non-Han people. The Qing dynasty built on Ming government patterns and continued the ICS2 to its end in 1911, suggesting that Ming Taizu not only set the pattern for the Ming, but the Qing as well. Lost in the maelstrom of Chinese history are the hundreds of millions of individuals who died violent or famine deaths in the multiple rebellions and invasions. Disorder was both a cause and a consequence of dynastic change. The middle of the seventeenth century saw the collapse of the Ming (1644) and the start of the Qing. For most Chinese subjects, which family controlled the Dragon Throne was of small importance – what mattered was that there be a government to enforce order and to exercise minimal interference in economic and social life. Heaven could deliver blessings or destruction, and dynastic change was often accompanied by the latter. Jonathan Spence described the Shandong county of Tancheng (T’an-ch’eng) as illustrative of violence during dynastic change. Earthquakes, famines, bandits, Manchus, and heavy snows hit the population with a string of disasters. In fifty years, the population dropped from 200,000 to 60,000, and cultivated land decreased by two-thirds (Spence 1979: 3). To defend against predatory bandits, the local population organized their own security. Veteran soldier Wang Ying led the operations in Tancheng, and was joined by the gentry elite who abandoned the countryside for the safety of the city. But even the wealthiest could not hide from Manchu raiding forces in 1643, which slaughtered up to 80% of gentry, killing tens of thousands throughout China. The new Manchu dynasty brought little peace and the slaughter continued, abetted by bandits, floods, and more famine. For many, life became devoid of meaning, and many sought suicide to escape suffering and loss. The combination of rebellion, outlawry, and foreign invasion not only violated human security, but eroded cooperative relationships within society. The old noblesse oblige of the gentry, who had set up schools, no longer motivated

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rebuilding after destruction. They had their sons tutored at home, rather than share educational resources with the community. Famine was exacerbated by the destruction of the granary system and interference with the food supply. One result was that no Tancheng student passed the imperial examinations 1646–1708 (Spence 1979: 16). Citizens of Tancheng believed that Confucius once visited their town for enlightenment. Tan was believed to have been a little principality in the late Zhou period, and in an era of rudimentary transportation and communications, the locale’s physiographic layout permitted a modicum of autonomy. The county had fertile land in the south, and was crisscrossed by rivers, though it was not as prosperous as its neighbors. Tancheng was a microcosmic society with few protections against the state. Part of Formula Three conveys the relationship between state and citizen [Op]. The peasants of China paid for state protection in two forms of taxation – land and labor. Power of the state came from its population in the form of their contributions, and was possible only by a thorough structure of mutual responsibility and supervision that was enforced by landlord families and township heads. However, Tancheng suffered a continuing financial crisis because of its location on an important imperial road to the south. Residents were often subjected to “extraordinary demands for road maintenance or transport services.” Although many of the old corvée and service payments were commuted to silver by 1670, a number of other service taxes remained, including gathering of willow branches for flood control construction as well as flood control work on dikes and dredging. Townspeople, soldiers, and landlords paid less than their fair share of taxes (ibid.: 46–7). Human security from the state always had a cost. Summarizing ICS2 actualization of sovereignty, the Qin formation of the QLS1 ended the multi-state system of the Warring Kingdoms, and bequeathed a long era of peace and prosperity to the Han. The multi-state system of the pre-Qin, often unstable and prone to war, was also the crucible of ideas about man and the state, as itinerant philosophers traveled from one kingdom to another, seeking royal sponsorship and a platform to expound their theories. This was the “hundred schools” – the most creative period in Chinese intellectual history. The Legalists were successful in finding a ready audience for their realism and absolutism in the kingdom of Qin. The record of the ICS2 was that peace generally accompanied unity, stability, and prosperity, while its decline produced the opposite, and allowed introduction of new ideas, institutions, elites, and technology during long periods of disunity. The paradox was that the shattering of one dynastic ICS2 was necessary for the next stage of dynastic consolidation. Despite each dynasty’s claims that it was re-establishing the patterns of the past, innovative patterns could be detected. The raising of Buddhism to state religion during the Sui-Tang period transformed the religious and intellectual life of Chinese society, and stimulated re-examination and reformulation of classical Confucianism into Neo-Confucianism. On the other hand, the succession from Ming to Qing by 1644 was relatively short, and the Manchus, who had developed a “state-in-waiting” on Ming frontiers, became a ruling elite within the pattern of the Ming state after they breached the Great Wall and overpowered the demoralized

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defenders, and further demoralized them by slaughter of the old elites. The result was continuation of the Ming-modified ICS2, with an absolutist character, and a failure to comprehend the nature and threats from Europe – the scientific revolution, discovery of the New World, emergence of the MSNS, and overseas colonies as mercantile ventures and precursors to global capitalism. Secure in capturing the Ming government machinery, the Manchus may have seen little need to modify it in any radical way, except to make it submissive to their priorities and subordinating Han people to their sway. The human security of the general population directly benefited from state unity, insofar as centralized administration eliminated regional military and civil conflict. State unity – as actualized sovereignty – facilitated common coinage, construction and connection of empire-wide transportation infrastructures, and a unified system of laws.

ICS2 and the theory of human security From Qin through Qing, historians identify about forty dynasties. Some were major and represented the ICS2 at its height, while others were ephemeral, and ruled only fragments of imperial territory. Even when in disarray, the fragments were coalescing toward a new unity that would reimpose political order. All states are based on force that consolidates order, and states which promise and deliver justice will find voluntary compliance [Op] of citizens more likely. Order alone, such as delivered by the Qin, is desirable for relief from frequent internecine war, but if based chiefly on fear, cannot be sustained indefinitely. Enforced order brings a large measure of human security to clients of the state, but does not guarantee equitable distribution of those benefits of peace. When there is a distorted distribution of human security benefits, political friction increases, reflected in the peasant and regional rebellions against practically all dynasties. Ultimately, the actualized sovereignty of any dynasty, its competence in maintaining order, and how equitably it could insure human security protections, including material necessities, went far in determining the longevity of dynasties, although other factors (abilities of individual monarchs, absence of natural disasters, invasions, and external wars) also played a part. Another long-term dynamic of the ICS2 was the refinement of its force mechanisms to re-create imperial unity. Qin had demonstrated how strategy, guile, and single-minded determination of purpose were critical in bringing down regional opposition to centralizing authority. The Han founder showed how a dynast could reward his supporters and then take back power from their successors. While Sui started a promising dynasty, it was ruined by imperial overreach. Mongol ruthlessness and surveillance of the population instructed the founder of Ming in a new level of absolutism which was further refined by the Qing. The long-term evolution of the ICS2 also saw the decline of the aristocracy – the great families who sometimes traced their ancestries to Zhou times. Periods of fragmentation gave new life to the old aristocrats, and approximately up to the Yuan dynasty, they enjoyed priority in government service. The Mongols were

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stern levelers of the Chinese feudal elite, such as remained to that time, and afterwards, minor gentry and even commoners had greater access to avenues of upward mobility. The political order brought by actualized sovereignty represented a major contribution of human security to the subject peoples of China, and the breakdown of imperial order injected life-threatening uncertainty to all. The form of the state went through trial and error, with each dynasty looking for the right formula for survival through military, economic, and administrative efficacy to insure state security for itself and human security for its subjects. In this search, there emerged a pattern of institutional reconstruction which gravitated toward the Confucian vision of the just and enlightened state. Many of the forty dynasties, with varying intensity, claimed that their government conformed to hallowed patterns of the Zhou, which Confucius celebrated as the golden age of empire. Recruiting classically educated sons of gentry to administer dynastic affairs, write its history, and oversee the population and military were tasks that reaffirmed conformity to the Confucian mold. We have specified this pattern of claimed sovereignty [Sc] – the basis of rule – as the ICS2 meta-constitution, and will next examine it in greater depth. In this chapter, we have outlined the dimensions of actualized sovereignty [Sa]. Without political order, some degree of acceptance by domestic elites and other states, and actual delivery of human security benefits, a state is a shaky mirage with little chance of surviving, as Wang Mang’s ephemeral Xin dynasty demonstrated. The broad features of the ICS2 meta-constitution were evolving as well as continuous, based on the foundations of actualized sovereignty under unified monarchies concentrating the powers of the state. Sovereignty was expressed through control of territory, often achieved through war, public works, and control of subjects. The shift from multiple centers of power to a single unified state was not fully accomplished until the early Ming, and even the Qing had to contend with rivals to the throne. The story of the dynasties was that wars could be eliminated only through one leader winning wars – peace was purchased at high cost in human lives and resources. Nonetheless, progress to stability and peace was evident in the high points of each dynasty and populations generally increased over the long run. Peace and prosperity accompanied the lowered coefficient of conflict [PF] as subjects of the emperor turned to economic pursuits. The Hobbesian metaphor of a state of nature seems to have little relevance in Chinese history. However, the empire was China’s Leviathan which periodically ended the conditions of imperial disunity when lives were, on average, nastier, more brutish, and shorter, although the transition to dynastic absolutism also entailed high costs in human security. Once a ruling dynasty was installed, men never fully surrendered their rights of self-defense through rebellion – as the frequency of uprisings demonstrates. Nor was civil contract an apt metaphor of dynastic supremacy, since the rule of law never reached anything like the status it has enjoyed in the West since Roman times. One is tempted to conclude that the notion of liberty, founded on European philosophers’ reading of natural law, did not and could not be discovered in the Chinese view of human nature. In place of

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natural law, the Chinese tradition emphasized the way (dao) of nature where that which is, is far more powerful than that which should be. In other words, the “is” exists on a higher plane than “ought.” In our human security framework, the individual seeks self-preservation, and as person, makes alliances, accepts and participates in social institutions, takes risks, and engages in conflict out of desperation or to improve his and his family’s survival – the “Moll Flanders” syndrome. Family was at the centre of the ICS2, with the dynastic family – including the wife and heirs projecting a model for the rest of society to imitate insofar as it expressed the ideals of filial piety, benevolence, and loyalty. Family – husband, wife, and children – was the natural unit of human society in Chinese tradition, not the individuals/persons as Hobbes, Locke, and other liberal thinkers postulated. The individual/person in China, as physical being and as person in society, derived his initial existence, subsequent knowledge and adult humanity from parents, and was therefore existentially subordinate to, and derived from, the family. This shifts some of the responsibility for human security from the individual to the family, or at least requires us to consider that Hobbes’ autonomous man is more artificial than has been considered. The role of political knowledge [Kp] is another human security element that emerges from the dynastic record. Before the Qin-Han period, historical records contained observations of political actions and their consequences. Rulers and scholars studied the histories for the lessons they contained – history was the mirror that reflected the past to the present and instructed rulers, officials, and subjects on their duties and the pitfalls of actions or non-action. Aiming to avoid the dangers of the past, Ming Taizu centralized his government and restricted court marriages to prevent usurpation by powerful men or families. Knowledge was also accumulated from the past in the form of geography, botany, zoology, medicine, and agriculture – technical knowledge that contributed to increasing the population and their longevity under beneficial conditions. Technology improved – bronze, iron, wheelbarrows, and paper improved the productivity of peace. Social organization benefited from dynastic unity as well. A strong military could repel raiders and invaders from land and sea. Family solidarity helped economic production and maintained social stability. Under the baojia system and its precursors, the nuclear and extended families were devices of mutual responsibility, and were co-opted as agencies of the ICS2 for corvée, taxes, and education. Despite the Qin’s short career, it established the momentum of Chinese unity which was cultivated by subsequent dynasties. Qin Shi Huangdi serves as the sine qua non of dynastic unifiers. All persons were subordinate to the Qin state. Special privilege and status of the aristocracy were reduced, and family could not be a source of autonomy. With new standardized Obligation [Op] of mutual responsibility, labor, taxes, registration, obedience to state law, and military service, persons in Qin society were transformed into standardized subjects. Qin military organization [M] became a major priority of the state, first for defense, and then for expansion. Expansion of society was accomplished first by defeating the Jung tribes, and then through the Legalist reforms, placing society completely

102 Imperial sovereignty in ancient China under the sovereign state. With this rudimentary totalitarian centralization of the Qin state, the social friction coefficient (SF) was eclipsed in large part by the political friction coefficient (PF). Finally, as the Qin state consolidated and expanded, its external relations (ER) were the source of opposition and opportunities of expansion and annexation. Qin ruthlessness and the inability of opponents to form durable alliances contributed to hegemony by 221 BC. During the rise of the Qin, a period of inter-state conflict and instability, the human security of Qin subjects/citizens was probably higher than that of other states. Rationalization of agricultural production and reduction of the aristocratic leisure class resulted in a greater food surplus. While frequent wars increased the risk of death to individual subjects, discipline and weapons and professional generals made the Qin risk lower than the risk faced by their enemies. Thus, by strengthening the state, Qin increased the average human security of its subjects (Formula Four), while “flattening” distribution by destroying remnants of Zhou feudalism.

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Claiming dynastic sovereignty under the imperial meta-constitution

The universe is corporeal; all that is real is material, and what is not material is not real. (Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan) Our present Son of Heaven is a great advocate of filial reverence. He regards the respectful attitude of children to their parents as a universal law of nature which is binding upon the whole human race regardless of difference of class; and he considers that the maintenance of filial reverence is the most important duty of a wise government, because by it human society can be kept in order in the simplest, most natural way. (Dream of the Red Chamber (Tsao 1958: 118))

Political order and the two types of sovereignty The MSNS search for sovereignty amplifies and echoes the individual’s pursuit for longer life. Without political order embedded as actualized sovereignty [Sa], the state is but a set of claims on territory and population. A state can be taken seriously by its citizens and other states only when it rests on an institutional foundation that guarantees a greater and more constant measure of human security for human units (individuals/persons) than is possible in the condition of raw nature or conditions of society. As evident from the formation of the QLS1 and several dynastic renewals of the ICS2, actualization of sovereignty requires coercion in the form of demonstration and threat of damage to resisters of that sovereignty. Wars have historically been the chief vehicles of actualized sovereignty, involving long-term and short-term losses of human security by significant numbers of individuals/persons/citizens. This chapter will address application of our theory of human security to the ICS2, and focus on the meta-constitution as the outward form of the imperial state. Actualized sovereignty [Sa], as we noted in the previous chapter, gave substance to the Chinese state, while claimed sovereignty [Sc] provided the form of the state, expressed in its meta-constitution. If states existed only to achieve and preserve sovereignty as control, then dictatorships such as QLS1 should have enjoyed far greater longevity than they did. Qin conquered, united and integrated

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an empire into a single governable unit – but had little to offer its subjects beyond blood, sweat, and peace for the law-abiding, titles and rewards for the ambitious, and prison, punishment, and servitude for the recalcitrant. The emperor and his ministers offered peace and order without a moral reference and without a viable social matrix of human relationships that made life more than tolerable. When the Han ICS2 overthrew and replaced QLS1, the latter’s lesson that unity was the best concomitant element for peace was incorporated into the dynastic cycle’s dynamics. But the scope of ICS2’s underlying assumptions for [Sc] was more ambitious, and contributed to its longevity. These assumptions were expressed as claims to legitimacy by imperial dynasties, and are amenable to notation as summarized in Formula Five. To further analyze and clarify the historical character of the traditional Chinese states, QLS1 and ICS2, we have referred to a state’s pattern of claimed sovereignty as its meta-constitution. The vectors of multiple elements within a meta-constitution will vary dynamically over time within limits. Once major shift occurs in [Av] (Allocated Values), then a new set of claimed sovereignty elements has emerged, and a new meta-constitution can be identified. Our working hypothesis is that a broad single meta-constitution existed for the ICS2 from 206 BC through AD 1911. It was hardly an ossified arrangement since old institutions were unused or abolished and new ones added throughout those centuries, but there was consistency over time that held the ICS2 to a single yet flexible (within the parameters of [Av]) meta-constitution. At least two major challenges in the form of rival meta-constitutions confronted the ICS2. The first was the Xin dynasty under Wang Mang, a radical reformer and usurper whose innovations (also based on claims of authentic ancient practices) expired when he was overthrown. The second was the Taiping Tianguo of the Taiping rebel Hong Xiuquan, who sought to create a state based on pseudo-Christian and quasiWestern foundations, but was defeated in 1864. While other variations might be noted, there was a remarkable continuity of the ICS2 through its long history, in contrast to the six Chinese meta-constitutions that emerged in the twentieth century, of which three are still extant and in mutual competition. Another important point on the two types of sovereignty is that, to the extent that we can discern a gap between what is actual and what is claimed, we may also postulate that there is a direct relationship between the magnitude of that gap ([Sc]  [Sa]) and that state’s potential for instability and conflict. For example, when Sui attacked Korea as a rebellious vassal, there was the explicit claim [Sc] of imperial sovereignty over Koguryo. Failure to subdue the kingdom was a failure of [Sa]. Likewise, Beijing’s claim of sovereignty [Sc] over Taiwan today is belied by actualized sovereignty [Sa] – a failure to exercise that jurisdiction. Claimed sovereignty adds little to the overall expansion of human security. As we saw from the notations of Formula Five, human security is absent from its component elements. In stark terms, [Sc] promises human security, but [Sa] actually delivers its benefits. In a modern context, international law is a set of

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claims and promises, but cannot deliver without compliance and cooperation from sovereign states. In another important respect [Sa] differs from [Sc], and consists of verifiable and perceptible realities. Borders are marked and guarded, armies and security forces are deployed, invaders are resisted and repelled, and governments administer justice, collect revenues, and conscript labor and soldiers. Human security at this level occurs in part through state intimidation, and in part in recognition that the state exercises force for the sake of collective protection. Costs and benefits should be fairly clear to citizens, while subjects are expected to obey without question. In contrast, [Sc], is comprised of promises, aspirations, and ambitions. While [Sa] consists of validated state power, [Sc] stakes its credibility on plausibility – past and future, may look back to a golden age, and forward to a better world as defined by state elites, social engineers, and philosophers. The power of [Sc] comes from the modified and guided collective memory of a people and from their hope for a secure future. It thus possesses an evocative power to stir citizens to action with the same intensity that occurs in the struggle for survival in raw nature. This vital emotional and energizing connection between [Sc] and individual human security contributed to the longevity of the ICS2, and also to the volatility of meta-constitutions in twentieth-century China.

Dynamics of the pre-modern imperial meta-constitution While Chinese historians and writers recognized the social, economic, and political dimensions of the dynastic cycle, there was also the myth of cosmic inevitability. However, wise rulership could postpone decline. The Zhou model of sage kingship, with the loyal Confucian bureaucracy, inspired the dynasties after the Qin, and was remarkably successful until the late Qing. Signals of trouble included peasant uprisings, famines, foreign incursions, floods, and other natural disasters. Loyal Confucian officials were not merely bureaucratic functionaries, but moral preceptors whose duty was to remonstrate with the ruler to maintain the “way of heaven” and avoid endangering the dynasty. Confucian officials were assigned to tutor the heir-apparent, and when he ascended the throne, they quoted classics, history, and current signs of decay that manifested heaven’s displeasure – sometimes at grave personal risk to them, since even virtuous messengers were executed. The vast majority of the Chinese people was peasant, and was denied any voice in government – save for desperate and violent protests in rebellion. Most knew the fatal consequences for themselves and their leaders, yet resorted to dissent by force because they already faced privation, starvation, and death. An emperor had to distinguish between rebellions of protest and uprisings that threatened to overthrow the dynasty, although the two often were fused as one. The peasantry determined the fate of the traditional Chinese state by providing support, however grudging and passive, in the form of taxes, labor, and candidates for bureaucratic office from the rural gentry, who depended on local prosperity. Massive withdrawal and resistance endangered a dynasty, and weakened its ability to carry out other functions, including defense and infrastructural construction and maintenance.

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An alternative to the contemporary MSNS model existed in imperial China for over twenty-one centuries, and when performing well, provided human security for much of its population, as evidenced by population growth figures. The Imperial Chinese State (ICS2) evolved over two millenia, and exercised actual sovereignty over hundreds of millions of subjects, whose numbers grew from around 40 million in AD 50 to 423 million in 1910 at the end of ICS2. Before it became an empire, Qin was one of the many princely states comprising Chinese territory prior to unification. Mountains formed the major natural borders of the kingdom, and in 770 BC Qin expanded and offered protection to the King of Zhou, who bestowed lands and title in return. The decline of the Zhou empire (more feudal than centralized at its height) initiated rivalry to succession, and centuries of war did not clarify which house was the rightful claimant. The Qin strengthened [Sa] through Legalist reforms, while administrative, economic, and military organization was tightened. These reforms enforced a leveling of feudal society, while establishing a new meritocratic hierarchy based on actions that reinforced a new political order of the state. Qin Order [Vo] was pursued through strictly enforced laws and equality of punishment, while removing any vestiges of political liberty [Vl] which the aristocracy had preserved. Strict legal equality [Ve] among subjects was a radical departure from the hierarchical practices of pre-Qin China, and was highly corrosive to the feudal structures which had characterized the past. Shang Yang, a founder of Legalism, established his system in the kingdom of Qin as a solution to the problem of disorder. The king of Qin gave him a free hand, and within a few years decreed the breaking up of great families. Father and son were forbidden to reside in the same household. The feudal families were the obstacle to actualizing state sovereignty and reordering of society was the solution. The core of his doctrine could be summarized: “The means, whereby a ruler of men encourages the people, are office and rank; the means, whereby a country is made prosperous, are agriculture and war” (Shang 1928: 185). By giving the ruler power to bestow rank and title on deserving men, Shang Yang weakened hereditary feudalism and offered an alternative to future generations. The supremacy of the emperor above all subjects, according to another Legalist, Han Feizi, was justified because “the intelligence of the people, like that of the infant, is useless . . . . ”1 Fu Zhengyuan comments that “the ruler’s monopoly over political power was further justified on the moral ground that he alone knows the true interests of the people. The herd should unconditionally follow the shepherd because their wellbeing suffers when they are left to their own devices” (Fu 1996: 53). Mutual surveillance, a tactic of control by autocrats that was refined in modern totalitarianism, was enforced by cruelty and terror under the Legalists, and the thinking was clearly influenced by analogy with war: Whoever did not denounce a culprit would be cut in two; whoever denounced a culprit would receive the same reward as he who decapitated an enemy; whoever concealed a culprit would receive the same punishment as he who surrendered to an enemy. (Rubin 1976: 58)

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Applying Legalist principles, the First Emperor achieved epochal success in uniting the Chinese empire into a form that influenced the state for the next twenty-one centuries. Qin and the Legalists made war the central principle of their state, paradoxically to bring peace. Wars of unification made an age of peace possible, after competing claims to sovereignty over territory [Tc] had been eliminated or subdued. Consolidation of the empire created a political entity far more powerful than any neighboring state, reducing external relations [ER] to management of tribute during periods of imperial strength. Although ephemeral compared to subsequent dynasties, QLS1 provided China’s first effective and imperial meta-constitution. Qin transformed a peripheral kingdom into the unified empire that gave form to subsequent empires and modern China. The Qin king claimed succession to the house of Zhou and all its territory [Tc]. The perennial state of war or preparation for war justified Qin/Legalist control [Cc] over subjects as soldiers and farmers. The same condition of war oriented Qin’s relations with other states [ERc], until all were subdued. Regarding allocated values [Av], we note that Order [Vo] was the primary motivator of action, and Equality [Ve] – as the leveling of feudalism – an instrumental value in achieving maximum control of a population, illustrating that increasing intensity of these two values necessarily reduced Liberty [Vl] of subjects in the state. The QLS1 constructed a meta-constitution suited to state-building, but one that was dysfunctional to state-maintenance. With all legal power and practical control vested in the emperor, individual subjects became cogs in the state machine, a metaphor that captivated Mozi, the philosopher of “universal love.” Though not a Legalist, he may be considered a radical egalitarian who renounced the ideal of personality and transferred all his hopes to the ideal state – the first Chinese utopia (Rubin 1976: 39).

Establishing the imperial Chinese state (ICS2) Two principles vied for primacy in the ICS2 meta-constitution – hierarchy and egalitarianism. Hierarchy was subdivided into two forms – ascriptive and achievement. Ascriptive hierarchy was characteristic of Zhou feudalism – with aristocratic birth as the primary criterion of status and rank. Achievement was associated with later variant models of the Confucian bureaucracy, recruited through education and the examination system. The Qin state broke the old feudal aristocracy, but could not prolong [Sa] beyond a few years after its founder. The enforced egalitarianism, based on rigorous law and the destruction of feudalism, characterized Qin Legalism and treated all subjects equally as parts in the state machine. Managers and administrators were recruited with rewards, and commoners were controlled by punishments and sanctions. The widespread use of harsh punitive measures condemned an ever-increasing number of subjects to slavery and prisons, creating a three-tiered hierarchy of rulers, subjects, and convicts. The parallels with twentieth-century Communist regimes are unmistakable – claims of egalitarian society belied by clear delineation among three classes. The reformer Wang Mang attempted to combine policies of leveling and reestablishment of feudal hierarchy, but he only exacerbated

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the problems of empire, though clearing away some aristocratic deadwood of the former Han. After defeating Qin, Han founder Liu Bang (who took the name Han Gaozu upon enthronement) reinstalled a modified feudalism out of practical necessity. He acknowledged the contributions his generals and subordinates had made to his success (Hucker 1975: 122), set up heredity fiefdoms in the east, and distributed them to his supporters. With the Revolt of Seven Princes in 154 BC, Han confiscated some of the lands, and extended direct imperial rule. Han Gaozu moderated Qin excesses while retaining important elements of former state organization. He cut taxes in half, moderated punishments, and emphasized that the state exists for the people, rather than vice versa. The population grew, the economy expanded and culture flourished (Hucker 1975: 123). However, the laissez-faire government (a component of [Vl])of the early years of the Han led to increasing inequities and arguments for greater state intervention in the economy in the reign of Han Wudi (reigned 141–87 BC), who centralized and reasserted imperial authority in domestic affairs. He trimmed the protofeudalist lords who had expanded their power at imperial expense through a series of measures, including the requirement that aristocratic lands be divided equally among sons, which resulted in fragmentation of the princedoms. This negation of primogeniture diffused into agrarian society, with the result of increasing fragmentation of farmland among sons over generations. Merchants created fortunes out of dealings in land, iron, salt, and liquor. Han Wudi introduced new taxes, forbade merchants to own farmland and established a state monopoly on salt, iron, and liquor distribution. The exigencies of establishing the new Han order required either abandonment or modification of the Qin meta-constitution, especially in light of failure to survive more than two generations of emperors. The Legalist principle of a single transcendent ruler was replaced by Han Gaozu’s sharing of spoils and power with his generals. This entailed a reintroduction of hierarchy (negating Legalist egalitarianism), and a weakening of central control (increased liberty for the new aristocrats) which may have contributed to increased prosperity for those who took advantage of new opportunities in the absence of domineering state control during the Qin. However, Order [Vo] was disturbed by the liberty of princes and marquises to expand, with resultant rebellions. State controls were extended at the expense of economic liberty for the sake of political order. The new administrative class, which matured in later dynasties under Confucianism and classical learning, was also an expression of modified egalitarianism of opportunity, though mostly limited to sons of gentry. Until the twentieth century, China had no written constitution, so it is necessary to impute the meta-constitution from claims and patterns of government rule. The premodern meta-constitution summarized the imperial state’s claims to authority, which lasted only as long as its efficacy. Authority consists of the ability of a government to minimize the difference between [Sc] and [Sa] over citizens/subjects and territory. Compared to a meta-constitution, a written constitution is a more historically specific statement of claimed sovereignty, is valid

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only to the extent of its actualized sovereignty, customarily contains a statement of general principles, and addresses three issues: 1 2 3

the design of government; the relationship between government and people; the relationship of people and government to broader transcendent values.

From the Western liberal perspective, written constitutions have been a positive development in human history. They have served as political contract between rulers and ruled, and as the foundation of national laws to protect the basic rights of citizens. They generally enunciate basic principles of the state and stipulate political offices, their powers, and their limitations. Constitutions also contain mechanisms and procedures for their amendment. Since the late eighteenth century, historical constitutions have been the output of delegates at constitutional conventions as well as the response of monarchs to pressures from below – the Meiji constitution of 1889, for example, was a “gift of the emperor to his people.” Some constitutions have been symbolic forms – liberal in words, but ignored in practice, as was the Soviet constitution of 1936, written and promulgated at the height of the Stalin purges. China has had several constitutions in the twentieth century that were both practical and symbolic. For Aristotle, a constitution meant the form of government, though more its actual distribution of power rather than its specific machinery. He classified constitutions into three essential forms, depending on the number of persons possessing political powers – democracy (rule by many), oligarchy (rule by a few), and monarchy (rule by one). Each form had positive and negative characteristics, and could transform into another type and be corrupted. For the purposes of understanding the sweep of China’s evolution as a state over millennia, the Aristotelian approach is more useful in a comparative sense than the modern liberal view of “constitutions as progress.” From the Aristotelian standpoint, China has had constitutions for three millennia. We can surmise an early quasi-constitutional framework from the beginning of the Zhou period and its dissipation by the eighth century BC. The fragmentation that characterized the Spring and Autumn period was not anarchy, but a forced experience in multistate politics under a nominal monarch. The period of Warring Kingdoms was a conflict between conceptual states – the centralizing/conquering state of Qin, and the feudal monarchies of the opposition states. The victorious Qin state gave way to Han, and its synthesis of centralized and delegated authority as imperial meta-constitution evolved over the next twenty-one centuries. One could further analyze individual dynasties and discover discrete forms of government, and even different monarchs within the same dynasty had varying styles and arrangements, but such a fractal approach obscures the larger phenomenon of the constitutional continuity that marked imperial China. A new meta-constitution emerges when there is a radical rearrangement of sovereignty claims by the state. Four notions of constitution help us to distinguish the identities of historical and contemporary meta-constitutions. First, the Aristotelian approach looks at the form of government, its viability, and how

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much resistance and disturbance it has generated. He wrote approvingly of the Carthaginian constitution, for example, noting its longevity and the loyalty of the common people (Aristotle 340 BC). Second, we have the criterion of democracy as the standard by which modern progressives and liberals judge the adequacy of constitutions. But democracy characterized by elections and limited government is a relatively recent human development, and possesses no guarantee of longevity in the eyes of many non-Westerners. A third approach, described in Formula Three, is suggested with the introduction of human security as the criterion of political efficacy. Instead of judging a constitution by its claims to extend liberty to its population, or to implement human rights and rule by law, or to specifying the component elements of a government and their contribution to the felicity of the citizenry, Formula Three allows us to evaluate a government in terms of its ability to facilitate the delivery of human security to its constituent population, while not interfering with the already considerable arsenal of human security knowledge, institutions, and techniques that humanity (as individuals and persons) has acquired and accumulated prior to establishment of the state. After the state is established, defence of its territory and population are minimum requirements for its support – security of the state, above and beyond protection of the population, becomes the sine qua non of statehood. This description of the actual constitution of a state, however, tells us little about what Montesquieu called the “spirit of the laws” – the ability of an abstract set of principles and institutional specifications to stimulate men to obedience, action, and sacrifice. This leads to the fourth notion of a constitution – as ideology. The concept of claimed sovereignty [Sc] evokes the long-term viability of a state-form to generate the voluntarism required of a large political community, where lineage links may be nonexistent among the majority who are strangers to one another. Men may be restrained and coerced to a certain range of actions and suppress their individual wills for a time, but this restraint cannot be the basis of a state that entertains an ambition of permanence. The pattern of claimed sovereignty as meta-constitution must be based on accomplishment of [Sc], or it has only weak penetration into human emotions and behavior which rationally and instinctively recognize arrangements conducive to individual life survival. This fourth approach includes the third as foundation. Historically, Qin’s actualized sovereignty was appropriated by the Han and subsequent dynasties, while the formulations of QLS1 claimed sovereignty were largely ignored as the ICS2 evolved its own meta-constitution. To summarize constitutions in terms of human security, ●

First, every constitution is security-driven, having a set of rules for a state that protects its constituents, territory, and government as a sovereign entity. We may consider this component to be the sum of human security and state security claims and protections. (The state’s promise to deliver human security to its citizens is not absolute. The efficacy of this promise rests on the state’s need to cancel the human security of some individuals through punishment when necessary, or to diminish the human security of all citizens for the sake of protecting the state.)

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Second, it is allocative in its form of government as expressed in its offices, institutions, and distribution of powers. Third, a constitution is justice-seeking – a contract between rulers and ruled, with an arrangement of rights, obligations, and powers, with law and custom establishing a framework for justice.

The first two points address [Sa], and the third summarizes the objective of [Sc], expressed in the meta-constitution. Every state has a meta-constitution, whether explicit or implicit, and security is the key component. Constitutions contain rules and criteria to implement the security claims of the state. Every state has access to force to back up its claims to authority and its promise of security. Since early times, a Chinese state has existed, though its sovereignty was periodically muted during times of fragmentation and disorder. Its repeated revival as dynastic entity argues that a persistent constitution underlies Chinese civilization, culture, and politics. Even when no single government prevailed, regional and local fragments of government modeled themselves after the Zhou and Han empires.

State and government States and their governments are established by men to enhance their security – more noble aims may be added or deduced later. The primacy of order [Vo] was emphasized by Hobbes as the first defense of life and property. Contract, law, and sovereign ruler protected men from the evils of civil strife. The British constitutional historian, S.B. Chrimes, sums up the “eternal problem of government”: The fundamental problems of government, like most of the really basic problems of human existence, do not change. They remain essentially the same in all ages and in all places. Since the remote, prehistorical times when men first sought to improve their hard lot by establishing civil government of some kind – how, when, or where, no one can say – the fundamental problems involved must have been present, however dimly realized, as they are still present today. These problems, then as now, are essentially how to reconcile apparently opposite aims and ideals. How to reconcile, without constant resort to force, law with liberty, progress with stability, the State with the individual; how to bind the government in power to law of some kind; how to reconcile government, strong enough to be effective, with the consent of at least the majority of the governed these are the fundamental problems, always existent, always in the nature of things demanding solution. (Chrimes 1965: 1) This view of government as rational and based on man’s need for peace and stability reflects the common notion of the state in Western secular and liberal thought, and has inspired constitution-writers on a global scale. In the Machiavelli-HobbesLocke tradition of the secular state, religion has no vital role to play, and is relegated

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to the private realm, along with family ties. Chrimes posits the existence of government as based on reconciliation – a view shared by non-Marxist political scholars and observers. Marxists tend to view (bourgeois) government as antagonistic to social needs, unless there is a socialist group in power. Socialists agree that the state has a role to play, but one that intervenes heavily in society and economy. From most Western persuasions, the state assumes the existence of government ruling a territorially defined state. The eternal problem is addressed by the MSNS, and the democratic MSNS is an even better solution from the reconciliation point of view. A central assumption of the MSNS is that individuals/persons relate to government as “citizens” – a public role in contrast to their private capacities. In the totalitarian state, the role of citizen is primary, while privacy is suspect. The secularization of Western government started in the late Renaissance, accelerated in the Reformation, and was legitimated in the Leviathan. By the nineteenth century, the European MSNS, carried by industrialization, commerce, and Christian missionaries, imposed itself on practically all human societies – which had to submit or conform. Its power impressed the Japanese, who observed the humbling of the magnificent Chinese empire by foreigners. Chinese historians see the Opium Wars as the watershed – the beginning of the end of the empire and the start of China’s incorporation into the global system of nation-states. Contacts between Europeans and the Chinese court, exemplified by the Macartney mission, were almost a caricature of the Chinese world view of their central place and the Europeans as uncultured barbarians. Pride in long-running civilization, rather than xenophobia, defined the Chinese attitude, causing them to underestimate the magnitude of the challenge from the West. Where the West had learned to tap into the human power of self-maximizing individualism and the material energy of steam and electricity, China had seemingly mastered an engine of human peace and order. Secularization of ICS2 did not occur until the latter half of the nineteenth century, when Chinese observers nervously watched European states’ power expand, with the realization that Western strength was a danger to the Chinese imperial mystique which underlay its meta-constitution: ●

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Democracy was based on individual equality under law – a contradiction to Confucian hierarchy and to “rule by men” not “rule by law.” Men were citizens with rights and obligations, not subjects under a king or emperor. Industrialization required specialization, which contradicted the elite raised by classical learning, who administered the country and were the nation’s schoolmasters. Christianity redirected man’s gaze to the hereafter, proclaimed the eternal soul, and threw out the old gods, while reinforcing democracy’s claims of equality and individuality.

Nonetheless, the ancient yet vigorous Confucian dynastic state had proven to be an equally valid solution to political order. The Westphalia establishment of the MSNS occurred four years after the inauguration of the last Chinese dynasty in 1644. For the Chinese, ICS2 state-building had been rehearsed and achieved

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several times, always coming up with the same solution – an empire, an emperor, a fairly homogeneous culture, a corps of administrators less and less based on familistic feudalism, and a state philosophy founded on Confucianism – the ICS2 meta-constitution in a nutshell. When fresh, with vigorous dynastic founders, the empire increased in population, expanded territory, stimulated cultural renaissance, and supervised economic prosperity. As a dynasty grew stale, its competence declined, local power and interests emerged as dominant, and nomads on the borders contributed to withering. Thus, the eternal problem for Chinese politics has not been reconciliation of diverse interests (Chrimes) or making bourgeois government serve society (Marx), but establishing and maintaining a government to rule the unified empire and to order society by force and through education. With force, the state actualized its sovereignty, and with education, it declared and implemented its claims to sovereignty. In the Hobbesian metaphor of law, contract, and fear of violent death, men had reasoned the state into existence. In the ICS2, men fought and died in order to seize or create state power, and the victors would proclaim they had the Mandate of Heaven to legitimate their rule. Whatever cooperation emerged was based on hierarchy that imitated the natural structure of the family. The Qin and Han dynasties wrote a script for the Chinese empire, with military conquest and competent administration the key components. The script was followed by the Sui and Tang, as well as the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing. One puzzle is that, if the meta-constitutional script was so well-crafted that inter-dynastic turmoil was progressively diminished, why would not this model of government be retained in perpetuity? The simplest answer is that the ICS2 meta-constitution was incompatible with the globalized MSNS, especially in the latter’s accommodation of liberty [Vl]. Also, the overwhelming military and technological superiority of expansive European imperialism, which turned inward in the two World Wars (Weigel 2005), left China relatively defenseless to aggressive Japan, and undercut the security rationale of the ICS2.

China’s imperial meta-constitution (ICS2) A meta-constitution differs from a normal state constitution in that it grows out of the practice and experience of government and politics, accumulated over generations. It incorporates citizen respect for history and laws and cannot be not entirely secular, since it usually addresses assumptions and beliefs that are essentially religious and faith-based. The claims of a state over its citizens [Cc] usually rest on religious or quasi-religious elements. It describes government institutions and the distribution of powers, and defines (explicitly or implicitly) who are the subjects or citizens and what are their rights and duties. It addresses territory and values, as well as sovereignty, and it generally roots its existence in metaphysical justification: the Chinese emperor formed the link between Heaven and Earth, and the well-being of the people proved the effectiveness of his stewardship. A meta-constitution, consisting of the basic assumptions about the broad form of a state, its governance including the nature of sovereignty, the relationship

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between government, groups, and individuals, the disposition of territory, and the criteria of citizenship, evolves and reflects – as well as preserves – the values of the particular society. Its validity depends on its effectiveness and the degree to which it provides protection for its citizens from external enemies, internal disorder, and from its own predatory inclinations. Before a meta-constitution can be implemented or given the opportunity to evolve, state sovereignty must be actualized (Formula Three) and a high degree of human security achieved. Thus, a metaconstitution, as a pattern of claimed sovereignty, requires the factual existence of an actual state – it takes human security to another level and convinces men that their survival depends upon the state, not upon their autonomous social or individual efforts. The meta-constitution responds to societal values and translates them into state-allocated values for the purpose of effective distribution of human security benefits in a way that reorients person obligation [Os] (to society) to citizen obligation [Op] (to nation-state). Written state constitutions attempt to clarify, adapt, and apply a meta-constitution to existing or changed historical circumstances. A meta-constitution emerges out of social practices and customary law, and finds expression in philosophy, religion, law, and war. For the Western liberal MSNS, its meta-constitution expressions have included strict, delineated territorial sovereignty, governments with a division of labor, rule of law, equality of citizens under law, individual rights, and theoretical equality of sovereign states. This model provided the template for the post-imperial Republic of China. In terms of human security theory, a meta-constitution: ● ●

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must base its claimed sovereignty on a foundation of actualized sovereignty; unifies a wide scope of human security activities – social and economic – into a cohesive set of rules, institutions, and knowledge; adapts the state to changed circumstances; and legitimates the maintenance and deployment of military force necessary for protection of the state’s territory, resources, and population.

A meta-constitution is characterized by fundamental principles of government that are applied to widely differing circumstances, and provide a mental and administrative map of the political universe, with aspirations of possible global application because its universalist claims establish criteria by which all other constitutions are judged. A meta-constitution must have been implemented in large part by a historical state and not merely a visionary design by a political philosopher (i.e. Plato’s Republic, or More’s Utopia). A meta-constitution must meet the test of actual sovereignty. A meta-constitution must also explicitly express the universal principles upon which it makes its claim to establish government. The ICS2 meta-constitution consisted of permanent and evolving components, including: 1

an emperor as hereditary ruler, dependent upon his and his dynasty’s performance;

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the emperor as religious link between cosmos and empire; a complex military apparatus responsible for frontier security and domestic tranquillity; the family/clan as the basic unit of society, including a sexual division of labor; a complex administrative system requiring both competence and trust; a universalizing ideology that gave primacy to Chinese written culture; and racial neutrality – absorption of nomadic and aboriginal groups into Han ethnicity and the mixed ancestry of several dynastic founders seems to have placed severe racial segregation out of bounds in traditional China.

Pragmatic elasticity was a critical element in the Chinese meta-constitution. It appeared in small states whose monarchs claimed to be dynastic successors and in the extensive empires from the Han through the Qing. The imperial metaconstitution was not codified in strict legal terms; it was embodied in government, the classic canon, and custom. Its efficacy and validity was rendered by the actualization of a dynasty’s claims to sovereignty. The foundations of the Chinese state were established much earlier than the Qin-Han, but it is only from this period that the twenty-one centuries long empire emerges. It emerged not as a written document like the American constitution, or any of the other many constitutions that characterized nineteenth-century liberalism (more aimed at limiting as well as empowering the scope of governments), but out of the negative experiences of Qin despotism and the organization of government under Han Gaozu. Later, Confucians embellished and rationalized the conduct and institutions of government in a way that gave it more cosmic connections – though without an explicit and separate state church of the Western experience. The theory of human security posits three levels of human existence: individual (biological entity), person (socio-economic member), and citizen/subject (political agent). Each level contributes to survival and security of humans, and each level encompasses a specific field of human knowledge that enhances longevity and survival. The meta-constitution is the articulated state framework that expresses a combination of assumed values and it guides the construction of institutions. Societies set rules and establish institutions that reinforce human security prior to the state’s meta-constitution. The state emerges out of economic and social practices, demanding and reinforcing cooperation, solidarity, and sharing of knowledge and material goods. Generally, the meta-constitution of the premodern state in China was the summation of socioeconomic practices, with the addition of force and governance institutions, legitimated by actual and claimed sovereignty. The more congruent a state’s meta-constitution with its socioeconomic infrastructure, the more durable the state proved to be. The characteristic difference between the premodern and modern state is that the former’s institutions of government and law evolved more out of custom, religion, and actualized sovereignty. It consolidated power through statecraft (the practical application of political knowledge, which is esoteric by definition) and the economical use of force. The modern state has been established

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on the foundations of traditional states, and claimed far broader sovereignty than forebears had envisioned. Value claims and expanded notions of citizenship have reinforced the nationalist component of the modern state. The written constitution of the modern state reflects its meta-constitutional theory, which has usually been a concoction of philosophers and ideologues, as interpreted by politicians, who sometimes may believe they are engineering a new political order. Some theories have proven more durable – the American experiment, for example, has lasted for two and a quarter centuries, while the Soviet state succumbed after seven decades. In this, the Soviet failure was in trying to transform the human soul of its citizens, while the American constitution accepted man for what he was, expecting neither metamorphosis nor angelic behavior. Imperial China’s meta-constitution The meta-constitution, in the context of the Chinese traditional state (ICS2), refers to ●

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the elements customarily included in modern written constitutions, such as an outline of political values, the structure of government, and some method of amendment; the unwritten assumptions and values of the state, which may be (and often are) religious in nature, or based on secular ideology, as in the French or Soviet post-revolutionary constitutions.

Both characteristics base sovereign authority on claims of a government’s ability to carry out its policies and to dispense benefits of human security. The efficacy of those claims depends in large part upon the credibility established with actualized sovereignty. Thus, we identify the meta-constitution as primarily reflecting the realm of claimed sovereignty, though sequentially, only after sovereignty has been actualized. In fact, formal constitutions are mostly in this same category since they claim jurisdiction for government, and claim foundation in certain collective values. Law is a central process of actualizing those claims. The notorious Soviet constitution of 1936 was famous for the huge discrepancy between its articles and actual practice during the height of Stalin’s purges and state terrorism. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, China’s political practices are slowly approaching what is claimed in its constitution, though there is far to go. Beijing’s current dilemma is that the Marxist economic assumptions of the past were falsified and have been nearly abandoned, though these remain in its meta-constitution of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Thought. In contemporary China, we are witnessing a shift in meta-constitutional assumptions as old claims of Communism are demonstrably falsified and abandoned in the market (though not political) reforms. The leadership’s problem is to revise the current constitution to reflect new realities of global political economy. Every dynastic founder was simultaneously an innovator and a restorer of the ICS2, recreating a centralized government from a meta-constitutional “script.”

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Cumulative changes that occurred during the inter-dynastic period – such as the expansion of Buddhism after the Han – were addressed and served as new props for the empire. The history of previous dynasties was a textbook for government – learning what to do, what policy was effective under what circumstances, what were critical danger points, and so on. Previous dynastic histories were a sourcebook and guide of political knowledge [Kp]. Dynastic founders directed scholars to write the official history of the previous dynasty, in large part to legitimize the new dynasty as receiving the Mandate of Heaven (tianming) which had been taken away from the previous regime for failures that the historians amply documented. In the agrarian society where technological and intellectual change was slow, those cumulative lessons had much relevance for every new set of rulers, as they pursued policies to expand and preserve the well-ordered state. For traditional China, there was a remarkable continuity of meta-constitution, combined with adaptability and evolution – up to the twentieth century. The claims to sovereignty were based on Confucian political ideas that connected individual, person and citizen in a hierarchical, though fluid, society to the monarchy. Underlying the success of Confucianism in dominating the meta-constitution was the transmutation of aristocratic principles and claims, based on familistic values and noblesse oblige, into an operational code for literati aspiring to academic degree status and state bureaucracy office, rendering that code largely supportive of the state and monarchy. Confucianism vulgarized aristocratic principles, in the same way that mass democracy and universal suffrage have lowered the bar for citizenship – broadening it to a wider constituency and removing ascribed privilege and prerogative as birthrights. A difference is that traditional China was pre-democratic, and citizenship, defined as the right to hold office, was narrowly qualified and filtered through imperial examinations. Modern democracy, on the other hand, stressing radical equality, tends to bestow citizenship liberally, while requiring little in return during peacetime except payment of taxes and obedience to laws. The post-Qin meta-constitution of the Imperial Chinese State responded to the lessons of extreme centralization of Legalist Qin as well as to the crony and aristocratic uprisings of the Former Han. Confucianism legitimated the shift from monarchy–nobility partnership to relative absolutism that reached its apogee during the Ming, relying on the landed gentry to provide officials who governed and underwrote imperial claims of sovereignty. Occasional literati demands for accountability sparked the demand for reforms during the Ming and Qing, but proved too little too late. In the process, Chinese intellectuals moved toward John Locke’s proposition that government rests on popular consent and rebellion is permissible when government subverts the ends (the protection of life, liberty, and property) for which it is established – an idea which Mencius had enunciated nearly two millennia before. The emperor was high priest and pontifex in the ancestral and Confucian cult, carrying out sacred and secular functions. The people acquiesced to government so long as lives and livelihood were maintained,2 and occasionally revolted in desperation when their basic human security was endangered. For protoliberal

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Confucians, the people were the expression of the Will of Heaven, though unaware of their mission. It remained for the intellectual elite to interpret the workings of Heaven. States, when not at war, must deal with contradictory claims of equality versus the realities of inequality. Wars are exceptional in that they force inequalities in the form of combatant and civilian, and commanders and subordinates. In peacetime, social organization tends to the task of distributing status, power, and material benefits. An additional consideration is that permanent ascription of deprivation and low-status not only alienates the multitudes who produce the bulk of food and housing (secondary human security goods) for the population, but makes their abandonment of established authority likely when an opportunity arises. Religion often fills the vacuum of hopelessness. Among the low castes of Hinduism, a meritorious life will deliver status rewards in the next reincarnation. African slaves brought to the New World found some relief in Christian promises of deliverance in an afterlife. A natural equality of mankind (though excluding womankind) was an early feature of Chinese thought, and imbued the three major doctrines: Confucianism, Daoism, and Legalism. Daoism, for example, denied that inequality was embedded in nature, seeing it as a human invention. Confucians also argued that a natural equality existed, at least at birth. What distinguished men in society was their use of the “evaluating mind” (Munro 1969: 23). Legalism was a premodern form of totalitarianism that sought to reduce all persons to complete subjects of the state – equal but without liberty. This required elimination of intermediate social institutions, especially family and clan that awarded status to persons and therefore reduced the authority of the state. Only the emperor had superior status in the Legalist state. This theory was implemented in the state of Qin, and contributed to its military might by making only two occupations legitimate: farming and fighting. With an armed and productive population, plus a strategic location, Qin was able to unify the Warring Kingdoms, but unable to create a ruling regime to rule the empire much beyond the lifetime of the founder, Qin Shi Huangdi. Application of theory’s Formula Five to the imperial state Formula Five applied to the QLS1 sovereignty claims shows [Sc] was a function of: ●

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[Tc] – the Qin state’s internal claims of territorial jurisdiction over its lands, waters, and inhabitants. These included all the lands of conquered and absorbed kingdoms, as well as the frontiers deemed important to defence of the empire. Establishment of commanderies and settlements, plus construction of canals and roads as well as the Great Wall defined and consolidated those claims. [ERc] – the Qin state’s claims against other states, which included territory and/or rights. By 221 BC, no other state or kingdom came near matching

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Qin power, although the vast expanse of the empire inevitably challenged non-Chinese local rulers to resist imperial expansion, and held it to the borders which defined Qin and subsequent rule. [Kp] – Qin political knowledge was based on historical experience, but the first emperor believed he was inaugurating an entirely new empire – and decided to set off in new directions. He relied heavily on military forces, which had won him the empire, and on conscripted labor, drawn from an ever-expanding convict population, thanks to draconian laws. Qin knew how to create an empire, but was less competent in establishing precedent for continuing his dynasty. In the end, prisoners rebelled and destroyed the Qin, and one of their numbers became emperor. [Av] – Qin stressed [Vo] and [Ve], and minimized [Vl]. Reality was that three categories of “citizenship” existed, eroding the assumption of equality under law. First was the emperor, who was above the law. In order to carve out a new supremacy, he ordered his officials to search the histories and devise a new title: “Huangdi” (Bai 1991). The second category consisted of subjects who served the empire as workers, farmers, and soldiers. And third were the “criminals” – those who had violated one or another of the Qin’s harsh legal code, were stripped of all liberty and property, and were forced to work on imperial construction projects. Lacking a class of party apparatchiks to provide information, coordination, and control over society, Qin Shi Huangdi could not prevent mutiny and rebellion in the system he had erected.

The Han dynasty broadened and modified [Kp] and [Av], though inheriting [Tc] and [ERc]. In the transition from Qin, the Han accepted the former’s (Sa) while constructing a new meta-constitution in place of the short-lived Qin state framework. Gradually, Confucian principles infiltrated the state and a new bureaucracy emerged, primarily loyal to the throne. The Han meta-constitution evolved through several manifestations as circumstances changed. An aristocracy survived several dynasties, through the Song, and was practically wiped out by the Mongol Yuan. The ICS2 meta-constitution operated during periods of dynastic unity as well as during cyclical lapses and fragmentation. The number of years between major dynasties progressively decreased after the Han. Nearly four centuries elapsed from the end of the Han to the start of the Tang, but only fifty-three years from the Tang to Song. The last three dynasties – Yuan, Ming, and Qing – quickly adapted the institutions of their predecessor and consolidated the empire into a unified and functioning state, with a minimum of fragmentation that had characterized earlier dynasties. Presumably there had been cumulative progress in learning how to reconstruct the imperial state. Scholars preserved and studied dynastic history, not as a cultural idiosyncrasy, but as it became a vital empirical data bank of knowledge which summarized the past and could be applied as lessons to current statecraft. A meta-constitution consensus emerged over the centuries, although applications ranged from literal revival of Zhou rituals and terms in Sui, to emulating public works and creating a meritocracy civil service inspired by legendary cultural

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heroes, Yao and Shun,3 to practical problems of taxation, war, and relations with nomadic tribes. The Qin could justify its state-building actions in human security terms – to end the chaos and instability of warring states. Han’s legitimating ideology aimed at first, ending Qin extreme centralization and rule by means of repressive law, and second, restoring the legendary balance and prosperity of the Zhou.

Confucianism – the foundation of claimed sovereignty [Sc ] under ICS2 Confucius lived and taught during an age of fragmentation, with several kingdoms competing and fighting for territory and population. His simple doctrine was that a better world would come about when men of superior quality – aristocrats in mind and character – ruled and set the example for all to follow. Princes ruled as hereditary aristocrats and needed honest and upright officials to lead armies, collect revenue, adjudicate disputes, and administer their realms. For Confucius, this provided the opportunity to improve the world – if men of virtue could be cultivated and encouraged to serve in government, then the state would return to a natural harmony (Liu 1988: 113). Confucianism emerged as the synthesis of familistic virtue and obligations of citizenship – a fusion that facilitated establishment and durability of the imperial meta-constitution. Its key features included: ●

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The centrality of the nuclear family as the core of human society and as the first line of human security for individuals. The ideal of filial piety (xiao), with its explicit hierarchy of roles, provided the major template for the public order. Confucianism midwifed the intellectual transformation of the old aristocrat (junzi) into competent scholar-officials who would serve the state as a moral duty, having primary loyalty to the emperor. A view of history as the record of the past and a mirror for maintaining the state made restoration of the centralized empire the sole legitimate political enterprise when the center collapsed. An agnostic view of religion enabled the state cult of emperor, while tolerating other beliefs as long as they did not endanger the supremacy of the emperor. The imperial cult assimilated ancestral worship/reverence and reinforced filial piety. A relatively light managerial approach to the economy – generally permissive, dedicated to insuring adequate revenues, building and maintaining the transportation, communication, education, and monetary systems. Various rulers resorted to measures of state economic interference, but never at twentieth-century levels. Confucianism also oversaw and reinforced the status hierarchy for society, moving it from ascription in the Han and Tang to achievement – governed by the Song and Ming. Achievement was channeled into formal classical education, and social status assigned by government-sponsored activities – the examinations.

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Confucianism was fundamentally hierarchical and inegalitarian in the assignment of learning-based status. It took the strong points of feudalism, removed aristocratic privilege and entitlements based on birth, and retained a value system increasingly estranged from its generating origins. The Confucians advocated the state as a moral agent – through education and example – and supported the ICS2 meta-constitution with imperial concentration of power as necessary to return the empire to a golden age of peace and prosperity. Confucian economic theory was fundamentally agricultural, with mild distrust mixed with tolerance toward commerce. The Confucian view of race-transcending culture as the central source and vehicle of identity facilitated integration of non-Chinese peoples into imperial membership, and allowed the acceptability of conquest dynasties, as long as they governed fairly and well. There was no collectivist rejection of responsible individuality in Confucianism and the individual/person, including the emperor, was a crucial moral agent in transforming society and state. Nor was there an apotheosis of the individual as in Christianity, where the immortal soul retained individuation in the next life, and tied mortals to the fate of their individual souls after death. Buddhism also fixed merit and guilt in the individual/person, but allotted more power to karma and allowed escape through reincarnation. Confucianism envisioned the good state not so much as a Platonic place where justice reigns by allotting just deserts to individuals (although both Plato and Confucius would agree that wisdom is the cardinal virtue of a ruler), but as a place where all are safe and have adequate life-sustaining supports through the merits of the wise ruler and his wiser officials. In sum, the Confucian state vision was one where human security could be maximized through order, a degree of equal opportunity based on merit, and application of political knowledge. The closest approximation of liberty was contained in Daoist doctrine, which validated the human impulse to freedom through escape from society and state into nature – an idealized view of nature that was far more fanciful and abstract than the raw nature confronted by Robinson Crusoe or Hobbesian natural man. After more than four centuries of fragmentation, the Sui dynasty re-created the ICS2. Although there were parallels with the period of Warring Kingdoms prior to unification, Sui chose the Han-Confucian meta-constitutional route over the QinLegalist path, and added Buddhism in an ecumenical gesture to the assimilated nonHan peoples of North China. The Sui reinstated a Confucian order with common standards of belief, of values, and of behavior. This revival was important for the reintegration of fragments of the old society. With a higher degree of value/institutional unity, the Social Friction coefficient [SF] was reduced, and sinification of non-Han people was facilitated. Other elements of ICS2 were also reinstated, including: ●

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the dynastic imperial throne, designated as the Son of Heaven, with rule based on family principles, remained the symbol of sovereignty. an administrative system based on recruitment by merit and competence, although the continuity and prominence of old families preserved a semiaristocracy which served as a recruitment pool for officials.

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Dynastic sovereignty and meta-consititution a centralized system of rule in frequent tension with regional and local power centers. a military establishment to protect the dynasty, the empire’s population, and its territory. The main tasks of the army were to guard and maintain frontiers against nomadic raiders, to expand imperial rule through pacification of neighbors, and to intimidate and defeat any rebellions or mutinies against imperial authority. a system of public works designed to improve agricultural production, commercial transportation, tax collection, and deployment of military forces where needed. a system of law to stabilize order and facilitate trade.

Key features of the post-Qin imperial meta-constitution Several themes emerge in the major Confucian texts that connect person to the state. First is how the Confucian notion of knowledge linked state and person. “Learning is pleasure, requires constant perseverance; application produces virtue” (Confucius 1965: 137). Learning is the task of an individual, maturing him into a person in society, adding qualities to the construction of that person which are partially derived from family and immediate social interaction. Virtue can be considered to be the sum of positive qualities which add to survivability of individuals and persons, as well as adding to the social capital of a group. Thus a fundamental element of the Confucian meta-constitution was classics-derived political knowledge [Kp] which an educated man brought to serve society and state. The philosopher Yu, a disciple of Confucius, said that filial piety and fraternal submission are the roots of all benevolent actions (Analects, I, 2.2). Thus, learning alone does not produce virtue, nor does a virtuous environment. The individual/person must actively submit to family values and cultivate habits of mind that produce the practice of benevolent behavior. The family in its best form provides the school for the virtuous man. Properly schooled, he can then serve the state as model and educator. The first duty of a youth is the practice of filial piety, then learning, which is the practice of virtue. In the Confucian universe, becoming a good son and brother were the first steps in acquiring virtue – the family was the school for teaching and learning, not only proper behaviors, but habits of the evaluating mind. Furthermore, teaching and learning were the two fundamental links between individual and society – the channels of socialization transforming the individual into person. Teaching and learning were two sides of completing the person – the best teachers in the world could accomplish little without a will and talent to learn. The content of learning did not consist of specialized or technical knowledge, but rather the experience and judgments – expressed in historical and philosophical records – of previous generations. “Confucius said: ‘There are three things of which the superior man stands in awe. He stands in awe of the ordinances of Heaven, of great men, and of the words of sages’ ” (Analects, VIII, 1). Knowledge, in the Confucian educational

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context, is the distillation of human experience and its application to one’s personal, social, and political interactions. Knowledge produces virtue, if correctly taught and learned, and virtue enlarges obligation. Rights, in the Western sense, are hardly present, and in Chinese translation, the notion (quanli) has a connotation of “power.” Men may be equal in natural powers, but they differ in their relationship to knowledge. The superior man (zhunzi) can be trusted with political power – he is steadfast and has breadth of mind. The political categories produced by Confucian theory have distant resemblance to those of the Greek polis which so influenced the Western nation-state. For one thing, the continuum of individual-family-state in traditional China was relatively unrelieved by the categories of private and public. Major European theorists, from Aristotle4 through Marx, saw family as the realm of the private, and often as a shackle on public altruism. Contrast this with Confucius: “There is government when the prince is prince, and the minister is minister; when the father is father, and the son is son”(Confucius 1965: 256). The Confucian notion of knowledge directly affected the concept of citizenship: First, only a relatively few men could achieve the knowledge and discernment that qualified them to participate in politics and policy – the realm of princely activity. “The people may be made to follow a path of action, but they may not be made to understand it”(Confucius 1965: 256). Knowledge and character determined imperial citizenship, except for royalty, who claimed preeminence in the state by family affiliation. In later dynasties, Confucian principles found expression in the examination system, which in theory raised the status of those who had pursued knowledge through years of study of the classical canon, while good character references from notables gave an extra boost to official appointment. Although not without serious operational defects, not the least of which was corruption through influence and nepotism, the system awarded participatory official status to a few thousand aspirants who served in the imperial court and at all levels of administration. Aristotle’s definition of citizenship was a person who has the right (exousia) to participate in deliberative or judicial office (Stanford 2002). The Confucian counterpart participated in an imperial state ruled by monarchy, assisted by a morallyautonomous knowledge elite. Full citizenship in the ICS2 was a rarefied meritocracy and was achieved through testing of character and mind through examinations. The men who had passed the examinations formed the recruitment pool for the imperial bureaucracy. Because of their long training in moral and historical texts, the state considered them best qualified to assist in governing. Since they tended to come from similar social backgrounds and had shared the experience of taking the exams together and acted as patrons or sponsors for each other, they had a strong sense of group identity. “Wherever they went they could be sure that their peers would share not only a moral system based on the texts they had learned to expound in the examinations, but also similar life experiences and lifestyles” (Harrison 2001: 15). Another associated Confucian ideal was eremitism – the moral dictum that high-minded officials (and in theory, they were selected because of their

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high-mindedness) would retire from imperial service if the monarchy was violating the principles of the Way (Dao). Faced with defection and implicit reprimand from his officials, the emperor would mend his ways. Mencius had expressed a further limitation on imperial hegemony, with reference to the right of rebellion, but this was suppressed as too dangerous by rulers and the literati. Thus, political knowledge was a confluence of equal parts of technical/practical information, moral prudence, and historical wisdom. The centrality of harmony in the Confucian meta-constitution may have lowered political friction [PF]. Political order in ICS2 was, in theory, based on social order derived from family. The Confucian system of political thought begins with virtue5 – the highest quality to be nurtured, and it had to be continuously cultivated through learning and practice. Its pure form was attained by only a very few sages, but its seeds are natural in all men. Its rare mature appearance is due to distractions and ignorance. It is smothered by bad influences but stimulated by a good environment. Men who love virtue will serve their princes without insubordination or extravagance, and with understanding, and solicitude. They are not foolhardy in bravery, and their devotion to filial piety extends to all human relations. Their knowledge comes from the study of history and the observation of men. Men of learning and virtue may come from any class, and they are not mere “utensils” or instruments of political power. This quality of scholar-officials serves the prince by administering the realm. They serve humanity by expanding harmony and benevolence. They serve themselves by exercising their benevolence and expanding the neighbourhood of virtuous men. By employing men of virtue and learning in government, the prince demonstrates his own righteousness and confirms the legitimacy of his rule. However, Qin conquest demonstrated that military power and wile were more far more effective in uniting the disparate kingdoms, and that using rigid authoritarian repression of critical thought and learning, plus a strict legal code of punishments was an efficient path to domination. Han dismantled extreme features of the Legalist system, turned to semi-feudal indirect rule. Later, the need for administrators unencumbered by feudal family loyalties increased the attractiveness of Confucianism. The rituals of monarchy proclaimed the majesty of the Son of Heaven (Tianzi ), but required dispensing security and justice to all parts of the empire in order to consolidate imperial authority. The emperor was the keystone of the imperial structure, Confucius had been the architect, and the Confucian scholarofficials were its “bricks” and “mortar,” as well as its “builder.” By projecting aristocratic family structure and values onto the family unit of society, Confucians had to drain its feudal and hereditary elitism, which was accomplished by nurturing intellectual and moral achievement above, or at the level of, bloodlines. Family roles became the template for persons in society and citizens in the state, transforming feudal hierarchy into the structure that maximized the political value of order [Vo]. Confucianism also introduced a modest measure of equality [Ve] of opportunity by stressing recognition of intellectual and moral achievement, not only in status but in official rank for a chosen few. The recruitment base

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was narrow – men only – and was, in practice, further limited to those with access to long-term education and study. Nevertheless the Confucian examinations represented a thawing of aristocratic privilege that encouraged men of talent and ambition to strive to serve the established imperial order. Confucian political theory conceived state and society as a seamless continuum. Private virtue and behavior were little different than what was required of public office-holders. Those who held official title, rank, and office were required by Confucian ideals to be strict in their comportment – to display and improve their virtue because it magnified their influence in society. Society was populated by persons in a subordinate relationship to the rulers, who in turn held authority by their virtue and position, and had to remain solicitous of their subjects to retain the faith of the people – without the people’s faith, there could be no government. In Western liberal society, Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” in the economy was an approximation of secular harmony (low [PF] coefficient) in the sense that persons pursued their self-interest with no explicit intent to serve the interest of others, yet did so nonetheless. In the Wealth of Nations, the natural outcome of commerce was peace and prosperity, if left to its natural operation without intervention of the state. For Confucius, the natural harmony of society was based on hierarchy – where all men maximized virtue from the top down, and behaved according to their station and appropriate to the rank of other persons. Unlike Smith’s “invisible hand,” Confucian social and political harmony required constant human efforts and attention. Hierarchy was not based on ascription and caste, and Confucius made it clear that virtue is improved through learning and human influences, though a few are born with wisdom and virtue. Harmony is most nourished where virtue, benevolence, and wisdom have primacy in a state, keeping in mind that virtue resides in persons – not in actual institutions. Thus, men should be evaluated and given places in government according to their strengths, in order to facilitate harmony. The division of labor has been suggested as another Western source of harmonious society. Emile Durkheim depicted the division of labor in society as key in the assignment of roles and status. Modernization is the increased specialization of labor that accompanies industrialization. Newtonian mechanics spilled over from the physical world to social and economic perspectives of Smith, Marx, and Durkheim. Chinese intellectuals, in contrast, were less interested in discovering the laws of nature and society than in understanding the correlation between natural world and human utility. While there were significant advances in science and technology, the discrete and specialized role of “scientist” failed to emerge in China until the twentieth century. Chinese philosophers were sometimes men of action and political–military affairs. Wang Yangming (1472–1529) believed that universal moral law is innate in man and could be discovered through self-cultivation and self-awareness – an approach which contradicted the orthodox Confucian reliance on classical studies as the means to self-cultivation. He emphasized the unity of knowledge and action. Yet he lived a life far from cloistered contemplation. As Governor-General

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of Guangxi-Guangdong, he fought bandits, oversaw construction of defense works, and suppressed rebels (Chang 1940). Chinese society, from the Han dynasty, was generally favored by governments which ruled lightly – providing security against domestic disorder, external invasions, managing water and transportation, and extracting revenues to pay for pomp and expenses. Government intervention took the form of monopolies, but economic liberty was not uncommon, and society flourished when they ruled minimally. The exception to specialization was the education of the scholarofficials. Similar to the education of the British imperial administrative class whose aspirants studied Latin, Greek, and the classics, Chinese sons of gentry who aspired to official status set their sights on a long preparation in nonpractical affairs. Their studies included the Confucian classics and histories, as well as commentaries, which were written in archaic style and often obscure ideographs. There was little practical application of this academic learning, except to pass the imperial examinations which were the chief route to official employment. Even failing at these, considerable status was accorded to the highly educated literati. These Confucian-educated gentlemen prided themselves on their non-specialization: “The superior man is not a tool” ( ). Their social roles consisted of performing a semi-sacerdotal function for the imperial cult, acting as transmission belt between government and society, establishing and maintaining cultural and moral standards for the people, providing a pool for recruiting government officials and to serving as teachers in their locality. Over the more than two millennia of Confucian empire, the scholar-officials increasingly monopolized the status hierarchy. Their learning and experience also provided informal governance where government was weak and far away. When a unified dynasty was waning or absent, the literati upheld the clan systems to maintain order and defense, as the weaker state gave way to strong family. The literati were transmitters of political knowledge [Kp], which had internal coherence by virtue of forming the official canon of learning. The knowledge imparted to aspiring scholar-officials was not as esoteric as would first appear. First, a common curriculum – the written classics – insured that a common lingua franca prevailed not only over the empire or its fragments, but over the centuries. The dynastic histories were a compendium of statecraft descriptions of how rulers had responded to crises and tasks of governance, and were lessons in how to rule and what to avoid. Every political situation was unique, but precedents provided guidance – if the right men were in positions of power and influence (Anderson 1964: 169). Through the chaos and reclamation of political order in Chinese history, the recurrent theme was restoration of unified empire. For the Confucians, this task required a heroic unifier who would be rewarded by fame and accolades, and his family would monopolize the throne for generations – the ultimate filial reward to one’s ancestors and descendants. An emperor needed the Confucian scholarofficials to administer his empire and justify his authority as bestowed by the Mandate of Heaven. In the late Qing, which was distorted by massive corruption and unaccountability at the highest levels of the state as well as losing imperial

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mystique with increasing contacts with the expanding West, new currents of thought emerged. Philip Kuhn has described how thinkers proposed a broader circle of engaged literati to participate in political and policy discussions – essentially expanding the definition of citizenship. Later, Liang Qichao broadened political participation even further, in advocating constitutional government for China – the collective “people,” or qun, enjoying political participation, could contribute to “the formation of a cohesive and strong nation-state” (Chang 1971: 201). This Rousseauian formulation – the bonding of the multitude’s particular wills into a single General Will – reached its apotheosis in Mao Zedong’s mass line and modern Chinese ultranationalism.

Dynamics of the ICS2 meta-constitution From Formula Five, territorial claims (Tc) and external relations (ERc) had a relatively consistent content in terms of post-Qin developments up to the midnineteenth century. Various forms of centrifugalism constantly threatened the centralized state. The Confucian bureaucracy evolved into an auxiliary arm of government to replace an often refractory aristocracy, whose local and regional interests led to rebellions and secession. While that bureaucracy occasionally exhibited characteristics of a separate arm of government, its existence depended upon a stable and unified monarchy (Zeng 1991: 109–10). This political knowledge became the hinge of value transformation from Legalism to Confucianism (∆Av). Legalism of the QLS1 had stipulated equality of all subjects of the emperor, to the extent of executing dissidents who claimed knowledge as their badge of privilege. Nonetheless, a single emperor could not rule alone, and Qin Shi Huangdi delegated considerable latitude to his Prime Minister, Li Si (Zeng 1991: 92). Exigencies of Han state-building made accommodation with the new emperor’s generals necessary, and space for aristocratic liberty was created by default at the expense of equality. Confucianism preserved both order [Vo] and a degree of (mostly economic) liberty [Vl], without the danger of ensconcing a class of subordinate hereditary rulers who often generated resistance. Confucian officials generally served for life and could not pass on their office to blood relatives, so avoiding slippage back to feudalism. While relationships among political values were constantly in flux, Order [Vo] remained the priority of all Chinese state regimes since Qin. Qin’s second priority, radical equality [Ve] under an allpowerful emperor, was replaced in Han by a mild form of liberty [Vl], in the form of intellectual and moral autonomy that was tested and awarded status – making “natural equality of men” more a theoretical and pedagogical hypothesis than an operational rule or goal of statecraft. The durability of the dynastic meta-constitution lies in its derivation from a socioeconomic and cultural domain that had provided the fertile environment for settlement, prosperity, and demographic expansion. The agrarian family household, hierarchical and industrious, was apotheosized by the aristocracy and monarchy, and its values transmuted into the formula for sovereign authority by

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Confucianism. Each dynasty adapted the Confucian meta-constitution not only to changed conditions, but in light of previous dynasties’ experiences, demonstrating flexibility and pragmatism that contributed to dynastic longevity. Most importantly, successful dynasties rarely failed in seeking to provide for the human security of their subjects, and when they did ignore their duties, they eroded their claims of sovereign authority. The kingdom of Qin created a constitution based on Legalist design rooted in a narrow view of human behavior – that is, imperial subjects respond with state-beneficial actions when given choices of reward or punishment. In the short run, practice of the theory transformed the peripheral state into a vigorous, ruthless, and unified empire. However, its radical egalitarianism and rigorous system of punishments proved to be a fatal flaw – the state was an artificial creation with no means of attracting loyalty. It could extract obedience and subservience using the Legalist theory of two handles of government – rewards and punishments. But it required an unattainable degree of information, attention, and control – as if an operator of a powerful machine had to constantly monitor and adjust the settings and inputs, and a moment’s distraction would result in breakdown. In the case of the QLS1, expansive use of punishment resulted in increasing numbers of prisoners and convicts and once the founder of the Qin labor gulags died, his successor could not maintain the same degree of control. The state machine’s principles of operation created enemies and obstructions that proved its undoing. The Sui suffered dynastic brevity, but for different reasons. The first emperor was eminently successful, but the son overreached, facilitating victory of Tang. After Song, the Mongols broke the remaining ethnic barriers, and re-centralized the post-Tang empire, which was then inherited by the Ming. The non-Han Manchus established the final empire that lasted over two and a half centuries. In this chapter we have examined the traditional claims of sovereignty in the imperial Confucian state. Territorial claims (Tc) were based not on legal ownership, but on occupation, exploitation, and ability to defend against incursion and rebellion – in other words, the exercise of actualized sovereignty. In external relations (ERc), the Confucian emperor, as Son of Heaven, claimed to be mediator between Heaven and Earth, so that non-Chinese rulers were theoretically subordinate to him. Political knowledge (Kp) was drawn from the classics, popularized in literature, such as novels and plays and even proverbs, and applied creatively to challenges of changing circumstances of state and family affairs. Political knowledge in the form of disseminated information about national conditions and imperial power formed the basis of individual citizens’ evaluations on whether to serve or avoid government careers. While Confucian avoidance and eremitism had little practical effect on government administrative competence, they set precedent and detracted from regime legitimacy. Finally, the relative priority of political values ([Vo], [Ve], and [Vl]) were critical to a dynastic claim to sovereignty. State-sponsored Confucianism stabilized order as primary, with equality and liberty in secondary and fluid rivalry. During its long suzerainty, the Chinese meta-constitution influenced other Asian kingdoms, and its impact continued through the twentieth century in modified

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form. The Tokugawa state in Japan based its authority on neo-Confucianism (Maruyama 1974), although there was no conservative mandarinate to maintain orthodox doctrine. The fusion of feudal society with the samurai as elite represented a modified Confucian template of governance. Meiji modernization was partly a successful adaptation of Confucian principles to the modern state. The Meiji Restoration stressed social order, education, and learning as the quickest route to modernization. Western nation-states had demonstrated military expansion to be the inevitable companion of industrialization, and the samurai warrior ethic contributed to the success of the Japanese imperial project. Japanese empire-builders justified that they were faithful Confucians, “lifting the fallen, and helping the weak” by their interventions in the crumbling Chinese empire and against Soviet Communism. Korea was another adaptation of the Confucian meta-constitution. The various peninsular kingdoms had long been independent yet nominal vassals of the Chinese empire. Rulers of the peninsula styled themselves “king” ( ), signifying their subordination to the one Son of Heaven in China. Documents were written in Chinese, until the invention of hangul in the fifteenth century. Not until the early twentieth century did the Korean ruler claim to be Emperor – declaring Korea independent of the failing Chinese empire, but retaining a Confucian metaconstitution. From 1909 through 1945, Koreans were subjects of the Japanese emperor, and were then divided into two states by the victorious Russians and Americans. North Korea became a hardline Communist state, governed with a mix of personality cult, extreme ideological orthodoxy, and isolation from much of the globe – a mixture of ancient legalism, modern nationalism, and a Stalinist syle of leadership. South Korea, until the Presidency of Roh Tae-Woo, exhibited paternalist features of the Confucian state and society, mediated by Meiji precedents. Syngman Rhee and Park Chung-Hee demonstrated a Confucian autocratic style balanced by public solicitude for the country they were rebuilding. The deeply-injured Korean people were not given the freedom and democracy of liberal democracy, but rather the human security of order and economic development. Only in 1986 was full democracy introduced, after years of successful economic expansion under military autocracy. Strong components of Confucian hierarchy, centrality of family and connections, and high motivation to education remain at the core of South Korean society. Factionalism and localism remain prominent in party politics, making compromise sometimes difficult in the context of moral principles.

8

Sovereignty and state-building in late Qing and Republican China

When the Chinese revolutionists introduced the Western ideas of democracy into China, their aim was to transplant the whole political system of the West. They thought that if only China were as democratic as the Western countries, she would have reached the zenith of success. (Sun Yat-sen (Hsu 1933: 370))

A new stage of the nation-state The European MSNS required centuries to reach democratic maturity. By the end of the Cold War, looking back at its wars and the tyrannies it had engendered, European elites decided that the old MSNS had become obsolete and so embarked on the grand project of a sovereignty-soft European Union. The United States, in some ways resembling a new empire similar to the late Roman Republic, was taking sovereignty, national interest, and national security to its limits and has been roundly criticized for refusing to accommodate international law’s restrictions on sovereignty (the International Criminal Court) or international cooperative ventures of environmental action (the Kyoto Protocols). In the European case, state sovereignty has been implicitly deemed destructive to human security, while for America, its maximization was the efficient solution to human security through national interest and preemptive interventions. In both cases, the gap between actualized sovereignty and claimed sovereignty is far less a concern than in contemporary China, where a perception of incomplete sovereignty underlies fundamental issues of state. One reason the United States has not feared state sovereignty is that its institutional structures have rarely gone out of control, in contrast to fascist and communist regimes in Europe. The US constitution was the exception to Karl Popper’s criticism: “every theory of sovereignty omits to face a more fundamental question – the question, namely, whether we should not strive towards institutional control of the rulers by balancing their powers against other powers” (Miller 1985: 321). Moreover, the permanent values of the American state were bespoken by the longevity of the American constitution, its vitality and relevance for over two centuries, and the quest for citizenship by millions of immigrants in a continuous affirmation of the spirit of its laws. For masses

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of Americans and those who aspired to become Americans, sovereignty was indivisible and non-problematic. For the European establishment – including political, academic, intellectual, and cultural elites – sovereignty is a burden of the past to be fashioned into a new superstate to balance the United States However, the French and Dutch rejection of a new supersovereignty in 2005 indicated that national identities had not disappeared – at least in economic and ethnic issues. Debates over the modification of existing sovereignty (Europe) or relative satisfaction over preserving existing arrangements (the United States) are luxuries which twentieth-century China has been denied because completion of sovereignty has eluded that nation. While the PRC possesses many of the major accouterments of the MSNS, it does not exercise jurisdiction over Taiwan. Far more than an administrative irregularity, Taiwan’s autonomy is a direct challenge to Chinese sovereignty. Beijing claims Taiwan to be a secessionist province, as though there had been a “perfect union” in 1949. In actuality, the government that re-formed on Taiwan in 1949 was the continuation of the Republic of China (GRS4), which was the direct heir of the Republic (RNS3) formed immediately after the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1912. China has used force, bluster, trade, and propaganda to de-legitimize the Republic of China on Taiwan (ROCOT), while the scope of Taiwan’s external relations has diminished considerably with most nations transferring diplomatic recognition to Beijing in its demand for an international One-China policy. Yet the ROC, from its establishment in Nanjing (1928) and through its exile on Taiwan, has displayed commitment to a single set of principles reflecting a relatively unbroken GRS4 metaconstitution. The mainland PRC has undergone three meta-constitutions and has forcibly occupied and administered most of the territory of the Qin-Han dynastic empires. Without Taiwan, it fails to include Ming and Qing territories, so one question is whether Communist China is successor to the earliest (Qin-Han) or the latest (Ming-Qing) empires. A further complication in modern China’s sovereignty dilemma is the possible emergence of a new meta-constitution on Taiwan (TIS8) – a state-form that could be the foundation for China’s breakup and is therefore stoutly opposed both by the Communist Party of China and Guomindang. This chapter will examine the Chinese Republic RNS3 as successor to ICS2, the attempted grafting of the Euro-American liberal state onto the Chinese state and the convergence of liberal, Bolshevik, and Confucian patterns onto GRS4. The rise and imperial expansion of the Japanese MSNS to the Asian mainland was a major factor in preventing GRS4 consolidation and providing the Communist revolution the opportunity to supplant the movement led initially by Sun Yat-sen.

Background to the Chinese Republic The appeals and power of the Euro-American liberal state were undeniable to Chinese patriots at the end of the nineteenth century. Not only had it expanded

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globally and subordinated practically all lands and waters of the earth, but the Japanese had demonstrated that its forms and values could be adapted and applied to backward (as the Chinese considered the Japanese) non-Western, non-Christian societies and transform them into economic and political powerhouses. Japan’s Meiji Restoration had shown the way with legal modernization, administrative centralization, economic industrialization, and educational reform. As John Dower wrote: Both the Ch’ing Dynasty and the Bakufu displayed a deep-seated prejudice against any new learning tainted with Western (read Christian) origin; they both set their faces sternly against any basic social change which would encroach upon the privileges of the ruling bureaucracy – civil in China, military in Japan. In Japan, however, the lower samurai with their military outlook, their sturdy nationalism and their successful leadership of the Meiji Restoration (1867–68), saved Japan from becoming a second China only by adapting to their own use the industrial technique and the necessary institutions which had given the Western nations their superior strength in dealing with “backward” nations. Unlike the samurai-bureaucrat whose loyalty to the Bakufu regime had become estranged and whose ambitions were obstructed by the Tokugawa caste-system, his Chinese administrative counterpart, the Confucian literatus, was so committed to the ancien regime and its institutions that he shrank from undertaking any far-reaching reforms. (Dower 1975: 137–8) Fin-de-siecle China was not Japan, which had enjoyed 267 years of peace and economic growth since the defeat of the virtual feudal kingdoms in 1600 (decisively at the battle of Sekigahara). The Tokugawa Shogunate had ruled under a neo-Confucian meta-constitution and determination to dissolve the remnants of feudalism through centralization. Thus restoration of the emperor’s power in 1867 and dissolution of the shogunate occurred in a relatively short time, so that a new direction of modernization rather than isolation could be pursued. China, in contrast, was an empire coming undone at the very time of Meiji renascence and so when the new Republican regime came into being in 1911, momentum to decentralization may have been unstoppable. Qing autocracy had sought to stem its downward spiral through reforms. The huge corruption scandal under Ho Shen in 1800 demonstrated the rot permeating the imperial government and the concurrent White Lotus Rebellion warned of larger peasant reactions to a dynasty losing its mandate. The massive Taiping Rebellion (1850–64), led by failed imperial examination candidate Hong Xiuquan, proved internally what the decade-earlier Opium Wars had validated externally – that the Manchu dynasty was a house in decline. The Tongzhi Emperor launched a few reforms to restore the prestige of the Qing, but regional and provincial military forces raised during the rebellions would not be dissolved and became the nuclei of modern warlordism. The last set of reforms (the Hundred Days Reform) was launched in the wake of defeat in the Sino-Japanese

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War (1894–95). In 1900, the Boxer uprising and subsequent settlement with the Treaty Powers proved to be another disaster for China, with foreign proscription of imperial examinations and imposition of heavy indemnities. A constitution with a limited monarchy was promulgated and a parliament established in the last decade of the Qing.

The challenge to the Chinese Republic With failure of the Hundred Days Reform, many intellectuals gave up hope that the monarchy could adequately protect the state and moved to the revolutionary camp. The Tongmenghui and its affiliates with overseas Chinese comprised a leading network of revolutionaries, with Japanese supporters hoping for a progressive partner in a new China to reduce the influence of the West in the region. The end of the Qing demonstrated that it was not merely intransigence that blocked China’s progress, but also the twin-pronged dilemma of national sovereignty. The first prong was internal sovereignty – from 1911 through 1949, no central government could fully control all the provinces and regions of China. The Republican nation-state (RNS3), as successor to the Qing, barely exercised authority outside north China and a secessionist south demanded representation at international conferences as the true voice of China. The second dilemma of sovereignty was external. China was too big a prize for the various imperialist powers to ignore and leave to its own dynamics. Various European states, plus Japan, claimed spheres of commercial and railway-building interest, although the principle of “Open Door” was established by British and Americans in the wake of post-Boxer “scramble for concessions” in 1900. The Euro-American liberal state – the model for the post-Qing Chinese Republic – contained no mechanism for actualizing sovereignty, save the universal mechanism of accumulating and deploying military force through war. The Japanese had remedied this shortcoming by adapting to the claimed sovereignty of the liberal state – introducing liberal state institutions in government, constitution, elections, education, and even in the media. Remnants of Japanese feudalism, the elite of the western han, preserved the inequalities of the old society while introducing citizenship with a heavy infusion of patriotism and acquiescence to bushido ideals, with the emperor as focal point of all loyalty. But the Chinese revolution of 1911 destroyed the monarchy and though Yuan Shikai tried to revive the throne as focus of a new China, his failure confirmed the futility of that project. So the Republicans soldiered on, perhaps hoping that the appearance of the Western liberal state in China would be sufficient to conjure its reality. World War I disabused most Chinese revolutionary intelligentsia of the Western liberal state as the road to full sovereignty, with tales of murderous trench warfare and mechanized and chemical terrors unleashed on opposing armies. More directly, the distraction of Europeans in the war gave license to predatory inclinations1 of Japan, whose government imposed the infamous Twenty-One Demands to further curtail Chinese remnants of sovereignty. With the end of the war and the Versailles

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settlement, Japan received Germany’s old territories and privileges, despite Wilson’s ideals that had caught the imagination of many Chinese. The May Fourth Movement sparked a new awakening that led to abandonment of the Western liberal state as template for Chinese democracy. Chinese revolutionaries divided on what the future state should be: a new type of Republic that the Guomindang advocated, or a radical Soviet-variety state, as introduced by the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. In effect, RNS3 correlated to the Western liberal state that had emerged in nineteenth-century Europe, but was a failure when transplanted to China. The Guomindang, reorganized in 1921 and led by Sun Yat-sen until his death in 1926, projected a meta-constitution based on the sovereignty claims of the Western liberal state, but using Chinese traditional and Russian revolutionary methods to actualize state sovereignty. The Chinese population experienced wars, rebellions, and foreign invasions for centuries, and ICS2 dynastic reconstruction had perennially followed collapse. But threats to China were patently different by the mid-nineteenth century. The entire framework of sovereignty claims came under attack. Not only the growing industrial might of the European empires, but their rivalries and ability to project effective military force thousands of miles from home were formidable threats to the territorial security of the Chinese empire. In addition, Christianity, science, and democracy were subverting and dissolving the very fabric of Chinese society that held the empire together. For the throne, the Confucian elite, aspirants to the elite as well as ordinary families, moral culture was eroding and the result was an extended crisis that endangered human security of all Chinese. The 1912 Chinese Republic was a response of those who saw their civilization in decline. Considerable inspiration for the emerging Chinese nation-state came from Japan – a society previously considered an inferior and backward imitation of China. The Meiji Restoration had transformed feudal Japan into a nearly modern, industrial, expansionist nation-state and by 1900 Britain recognized Japan as a fully sovereign nation, abrogating the onerous and humiliating unequal treaties. England promoted Japan into an ally with the treaty of 1902 in order to check Russia’s eastward advance. The Boxer rebellion and subsequent Nine-Power intervention demonstrated that the Manchu’s decades-long decline rendered China a kind of eastern counterpart to the Ottoman Empire – the “Sick Man of East Asia,” or as Chinese described their country, a “ripe melon” to be sliced up by the Powers. China had been saved from dismemberment at the turn of the century partly by the Anglo-American iteration of the Open Door policy, but could not depend on the good intentions of sympathetic powers to postpone inevitable humiliations. Domestically, China’s populace suffered from increasing poverty and civil disorder. Gentry, bandits, and warlords took control of regions and locales as the central government became less and less effective. The monarchy was overthrown in 1911 and replaced by a parliamentary Republic, with little noticeable change in social or political order. The challenge for China during the twentieth century has been to build a new state order to provide for the human security its hundreds of millions of citizens. To this end, a range of state models has been imitated. The meta-constitution of

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ICS2 had provided a reasonably consistent framework of political order for premodern China, but became obsolete with the emergence of the MSNS and its global expansion.

The Qing empire – bridge between empire and nation-state The nineteenth century was a watershed between the ICS2 meta-constitution and several new meta-constitutions. In terms of authenticity and adaptation to the exigencies of retaining institutional, intellectual, and territorial legacy of the empire, GRS4 has been relatively conservative in preserving that heritage. Regarding GRS4 claims of sovereignty [Sa], its trajectory first merged with the first Chinese Republic (RNS3) from 1911 through the Nanjing Republic and then superseded RNS3 to the period of ROCOT. The catalyst for replacement of ICS2 by RNS3 and then GRS4 was the expansion of the European MSNS to East Asia. The MSNS is an edifice built on earlier empires and the leading imperial states were those which expanded globally and subsequently industrialized earliest. This group included primarily England, France, and the Netherlands, while Spain/Portugal did not sustain their early lead partly through failure to incorporate the scientific and secular culture of the enlightenment. A second group, consisting of Germany, Italy, Russia, and Japan, emerged later as more authoritarian imperial powers incorporating industrialization and hypernationalism as they struggled to catch up with the first group, triggering arms races and wars in the process. In the nineteenth century, the United States became an imperial power, acquiring distant territories in easy victories over the moribund Spanish empire in 1898. A third group of nation-states emerged in the twentieth century partly as the result of wars between the earlier and later empires and partly from the post-World War II breakup of remaining empires. The microstates of the Pacific, the dysfunctional states of Africa and the Middle East, the ethno-religious melanges of the Indian subcontinent and the wavering democracies of Latin America are all children of European maritime, military, religious, and industrial expansion and exhibit characteristics of modernity struggling for dominance and traditions trying to survive. China was too large and too distant to be absorbed as any single country’s colony. Not only was the Qing Empire a strong regional power through the 1840s, but its continued formal sovereignty preserved an entity that was little threat to the predatory nation-states of Europe and later, Japan. Its wealth and weakness after the Opium Wars gave the imperialist powers huge opportunity to gain economic benefits with little corresponding political responsibility. The record of industrial imperialism in China was one of economic and political opportunism, with Japan the most eager to expand at the expense of the declining Manchus and their subsequent nationalist heirs.

End of the Qing and human security theory Formula Five stipulates that the state’s claims to provide human security are a function of territorial claims, control over citizens, claims against other states,

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the content of political knowledge, and combinant political values. By the late nineteenth century, the Qing dynasty continued its claims to be the legitimate population-protecting regime, but was losing credibility as the major agent of human security. Recognition of this discrepancy stimulated the foreign powers to accelerate efforts to gain footholds and positions in the decaying empire. Domestically, the subunits of empire – down to constituent families and newly emerging associations – were assuming human security roles that further reduced powers of the state. Similar to the Catholic papacy, the Chinese imperial state had adapted to circumstances over many centuries, yet remained faithful to central dogma. Philip Kuhn examined some of the challenges to the empire at the end of the eighteenth century (Kuhn 2002). Although the European Industrial Revolution had not yet propelled Western commercial interests into the Far East with the ferocity to be experienced half a century later, Enlightenment ideas diffused into China and affected currents of thought. As Kuhn notes, “Political activists of the nineteenth century were already dealing with questions of participation, competition and control in the context of conditions inherited from the eighteenth century and earlier” (Kuhn 2002: 1–2). Two major thinkers of the late Qing period, Wei Yuan and Feng Guifen (1809–74) advocated reform of the Confucian system of government by making it more accountable and also by broadening the political elites without compounding factionalism. Innate conservatism of a system that had worked fairly well and the entrenched interests of office-holders postponed reforms until the ending decades of the dynastic empire, well after it was too late. Before a new Chinese Republic could become reality as MSNS, sovereignty had to be realized [Sa], not merely claimed [Sc]. As events demonstrated, a mere change in the form of government at the center was inadequate. Moreover, global events accelerated faster than the Chinese reformers and revolutionaries could cope. First, Japan’s transformation and aggressive imperialism demonstrated that ICS2 was stagnating in its final decades. Second, industrialization and globalization were creating two Chinas – the traditional agricultural, gentry-dominated society–economy embedded in fragmented state remnants, dominated by local and regional military; and an emerging urban industrial–commercial nexus linked to centers in the advanced industrial world. Third, World War I and the Russian revolution forced the Chinese modernizing elites to rethink their assumptions and vision about the future place of China in the international order. Parliamentary democracy, which had seemed the dominant and progressive state-form of the nineteenth century, was shown to have fatal contradictions and failed to meet the needs of China in its disarray. World War I emphasized the power of popular nationalism and the ability of states to mobilize their resources for war. But the war itself was based on imperialism, according to Lenin, and Chinese revolutionaries saw capitalist imperialism as a major source of their own subordination in the world order. Lenin’s leadership of the Russian revolution was undoubtedly an inspiration to a segment of the politically active Chinese intelligentsia. It provided an analysis of capitalist imperialism and more importantly, a method to combat it. That method consisted of a united and disciplined revolutionary party. The

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Guomindang had been reorganized from a revolutionary, conspiratorial Party into a vote-seeking parliamentary Party for the 1912 elections. With Yuan’s coup, the Guomindang had to flee the capital. In the wake of the May Fourth Movement of 1919, the party once again reorganized, but along lines of Lenin’s Bolshevism. The sixteen-year span of the RNS3 was a critical stage in the evolution of the meta-constitutions that followed. It was an attempt to establish a Chinese version of the European liberal state and with an eye on the Japanese success in nationbuilding. It marked the beginning of the modern Chinese syndrome of seeking and emulating successful models of state modernization, although the GRS4 and the MCS6 drew inspiration equally from domestic sources – the Guomindang eclectically from the ICS2 and RNS3 and the Maoists from a combination of historical peasant rebellions and the Paris commune. Modern Chinese state-building has been seven parts eclecticism and three parts pragmatism – a slightly more precise formulation of the late Qing motto, “Chinese learning for essence, Western learning for practice” (zhongxue wei ti, xixue wei yong). We can translate the key Chinese state-building events into human security elements. Human security of individuals/persons The late Qing period saw increasing institutional vulnerability to foreign ideas and while the failure to adapt to external pressures contributed to ICS2 collapse, state centralization was never so complete that dynastic failure would demolish society. The cellular nature of Chinese society, based on trade and clan networks, enabled it to function adequately in the absence of imperial coordination (though decentralization tended to exacerbate local and regional inequalities) increasing the coefficient of political friction [PF] and reducing the ability of central government to protect territory from external penetration. For the Chinese masses, the passage of a dynasty had little immediate effect. With imperial decline, the connections between the national polity and families further weakened and loosened. Individuals were more likely to survive and prosper within the traditional household than relying on the state. Against the devastating rebellions of the nineteenth century, local clans organized for their own self-defense. Intensification of consanguine ties and alliances through marriage no doubt strengthened orientation and obligation away from the state and in favor of family [F]. Events in late Qing also affected the content and status of social and political knowledge. For decades, knowledge from and about the West had penetrated China, gradually displacing, contradicting, and occasionally reinforcing Chinese knowledge. Missionary schools, new universities, translations of Western books, and promulgation of cheap publications all had their effect on dispersion of new knowledge. Hong Xiuquan, the founder of the Taiping sect, had been inspired by a Christian biblical tract given him by a foreign missionary. The elimination of the imperial examinations removed a key incentive for the study of Confucianism, after the traditional status ladder was removed. With the breakdown of imperial order, the natural environment became more dangerous, with floods, drought, and vagaries of weather interfering with food production. Imperial coordination of

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relief, irrigation, flood control, and food storage was no longer assured and threats of local famines became more common. The half century to 1949 was a time of political breakdown, civil wars and Japanese invasion, but still China’s population growth continued unabated. Angus Maddison provides relevant demographic figures: (Maddison 1998: 169). Year

Population (in millions, rounded off)

1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950

400 423 472 489 519 547

Decade increase (calculated)

23 49 17 30 28

A preliminary conclusion based on these raw numbers is that the overall human security of China – preservation of life – did not come to an end with the breakdown of the ICS2, nor did failures of the RNS3 and GRS4 halt population growth. The centralized Chinese state was not a primary component of human security during the post-imperial period and reflects the genius of Chinese social organization (derived from centuries of Confucian-inspired familism) to maintain the lives of individuals through their social existence as persons. If a unified Chinese state is not critical to human security of Chinese, then other rationales must be explored. The most obvious is that a fragmented polity would likely witness rapid economic progress of some provinces and regions, while others would fall behind without a strong central government to allocate resources and impose rough equality on all citizens. The regions of western China might reclaim their central Asian character with increasing divergence between coastal and interior China, resulting in greater inter-regional conflict (increased [PF]). Human security in society Chinese society had sustained life and absorbed non-Han trespassers successfully throughout its history and the period between Han and Sui demonstrated the adaptability of that society despite weak state superstructure. However, the infiltration of new ideas and values and the devaluation of the Confucian gentry, its moral code and its historical mission of sustaining empire, combined to militate against resurrection of the ICS2. Instead, twentieth-century China has searched for a state-form that could provide a higher level of human security than a stateless society and could deliver all the benefits of welfare and power of the MSNS. Until the post-1949 meta-constitutions of Chinese Communism, the RNS3 and GRS4 had sought to provide the shell of the MSNS with minimum tampering in Chinese society. The result of Republican minimalism was the failure to strike very deep roots in that society.

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Human security under RNS3 Human security in Chinese society under the ineffective RNS3 may be summarized within the scope of Formula Two. Liberty [L] The breakdown of ICS2 released social elites from previous restraints and was thus an increase in Liberty [Ls] and [Lp]. For women, the promise of a liberal MSNS for China was that they would no longer be forced to bind their feet or marry a husband chosen by parents or relatives. They could seek modern education and travel more freely, though they could not vote in RNS3. Men would no longer be instruments of family, could discuss and participate in politics and could travel abroad. Gentry sons would no longer have to spend their youths and adulthood studying Confucian classics and preparing for imperial examinations. They could seek careers in commerce, become wealthy, and marry for romantic love if they chose. Far fewer changes had occurred in rural and small-town China and the old-line gentry tried to retain their local power (Spence 1990: 279). In fact, much of the RNS3 promise was unfulfilled – and the GRS4 proved only slightly more active in changing social mores. Knowledge [Ks] The rapid infiltration of Western knowledge began in mid-nineteenth century, carried by missionaries, scientists, teachers, and publications. Industrial technology accelerated change in Chinese society, although it aroused opposition from those fearful of structural unemployment – porters, rickshaw drawers, and bargepullers among others. Machines would displace men and social unrest would soar. Medical science was a gateway to cures and preventions, but a threat to practitioners of traditional medicine. The baihua (Chinese vernacular) language movement was simplifying the written language, making literacy more available to the masses, and was no longer the preserve of the literati elite. Social economy [Es ] Western trade and diminishing costs of travel and transportation facilitated overseas markets. The passing of the Confucian order lifted the status repression of merchants and business became an attractive activity for many sons who earlier would have aspired to literati-official status. The modern corporation penetrated China as a form of business organization, though the family-owned firm remained the dominant pattern. Social friction coefficient [SF] Growing awareness of class distinctions, in part inspired by imported Western perspectives of democracy and Marxism, raised resentments and anxieties over

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disparities of wealth and status. Urban–rural cleavages increased, especially between the Western-dominated cities (with Shanghai as the leading prototype) and the interior areas, where banditry was often endemic. A new modern military class, dominated by the Beiyang group, had emerged in late Qing and held sway over much of rural China and their subfactions often engaged in wars and mutual maneuvering. The actual sovereignty of RNS3, while slightly enhanced by positive liberty of persons within society, was more diminished by the fragmentation of obligation [Oc] to the new state, which resulted from redirection of personal inputs to government to local authorities. The role of the military [M], which was human security positive when defending territory and security of the state, became a negative element in RNS3 sovereignty. Political friction [PF] between the constitutionalists (led by the Guomindang) and the Beiyang clique was high. External Relations [ER] was another Achilles heel of RNS3 and the major powers – especially Japan – created further impediments to full sovereignty. The transfer of sovereignty from the Qing monarchy to the constitutional Republic in 1912 transformed hundreds of millions of Chinese subjects into citizens. In theory, loyalty to the dynasty was transformed into rights and obligations within the new state. In reality, little had changed for the vast majority, with tax and labor obligations rendered to local and provincial authorities – usually warlords, or foreigners in the case of concessions. In summary, the actualized sovereignty of RNS3 remained weak and continued to manifest the decentralization that had started in the late Qing period.

Actualizing sovereignty in GRS4 The Guomindang created its own fighting force with Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kaishek) as commander, establishing a military academy at Whampoa to train a new officer corps. The nationalist party launched its Northern Expedition from Canton in 1926 and its armies were joined by friendly militarists from Guangxi as well as the Communist Party of China. The mission of the military phase of the nationalist revolution was threefold: ●

● ●

to defeat or absorb the local and regional military forces nominally loyal to Beijing and the dominant Beiyang clique; to avoid confrontation with foreign troops or damage to foreign interests; and to establish Guomindang authority in all captured territory.

By the end of December 1926, the Nationalists had controlled seven provinces with a population of about 170 million. Of prime importance in this success in only six months was the “two years of training and equipping the original National Revolutionary Army with Russian help and the battle-hardening of campaigns in Kwangtung (Guangdong) during 1925. Another was the political indoctrination of troops and officers, giving them the cause for which to fight – essentially an ardent spirit of nationalism” (Wilbur 1983: 62). Also important was

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the fiscal reform carried out in Guangdong. Russian advisors played an important role in campaigns and each corps had Russian advisors, as did some of the divisions. The Northern Expedition consisted of two major phases: First, the southern base of the state had to be secured. Two armies marched from Guangzhou (Canton) – one proceeded to Wuhan which became the seat of the provisional government. Wuhan was important as the gateway to the upper Yangzi valley as well as a growing industrial, commercial, communication, and transportation center. Its capture by Guangxi General Bai Zhongxi, secured the inland seaport and the southern terminus of the railway connecting to North China and Beijing. From Wuhan the Nationalist armies proceeded downriver to Nanjing and the grand prize, Shanghai. Another army was proceeding along the coast through Fujian and Zhejiang in a pincer movement, capturing Shanghai in April 1927. The Chinese Communists, who had joined with the Guomindang in a United Front on the instructions of the Soviets, had intended to seize power once the Nationalists completed the military unification of the country. Jiang Jieshi moved first, killed hundreds of Communists and their supporters and brought an end to the alliance. The second phase began shortly afterward, with Nationalist columns using the two major North–South railways to speed their progress. The Shanxi warlord, Yan Xishan, used his own narrow-gauge railway track to retreat and avoid defeat, while on the eastern front, Nationalist forces sidetracked upstream from Jinan to cross the Yellow River so as to avoid clashing with Japanese forces. General Zhang Zuolin, supported by Japan, withdrew from Beijing and was assassinated in a train explosion while escaping. The capture of the national capital marked the end of the second phase of the Northern Expedition. With occupation of the major urban centers by Nationalist troops and the shedding of Communist allies, the new GRS4 was recognized by the major powers. The Japanese were most concerned at Nanjing’s threat to their special interests and as the Chinese government began plans to develop Manchuria in league with the deceased warlord’s son, Zhang Xueliang, they attacked and set up the puppet state of Manchukuo in 1931. When the Nationalist army entered Beijing, the Republic had an opportunity for a fresh start. The government established in Nanjing followed Sun Yat-sen’s design. Western-trained bankers and financiers joined the government to establish a new currency and banking system and to build the credit of a state desperately in need of foreign investment and loans. Unlike the Bolsheviks who repudiated Western loans when they came to power, the Nationalists accepted RNS3 debt burdens in order to expedite international recognition and avoid the difficulties Moscow faced in its early years. The impact of the Nationalist Republic on development of the Chinese MSNS has been controversial. For critics (Eastman 1990), the Nationalist revolution was a misguided and failed attempt to seize central power. This author (Bedeski 1981) explained the Nanjing state as essentially sound but failing in large part because of overwhelming external threats to its tenuous sovereignty – including Japanese expansionism, neglect by the major powers and international economic depression. Once momentum of Guomindang state-building was interrupted in

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the 1930s and with major loss of territory to Japan, the movement suffered severe desiccation and demoralization. Before World War II, the Nanjing Republic had defeated or neutralized most of the assorted warlords and gained international credibility during the war. In these ways the Guomindang not only initiated a second modern state-building project of China (after RNS3), but constructed the platform of actualized sovereignty upon which the Communists could establish their meta-constitution(s). The accomplishments of GRS4 by 1945 were: “First, the territorial fragments of the Republic were significantly, but not totally, integrated into a unified state system . . . Second, the Guomindang established the institutions and priorities of the modern Chinese state . . . Finally, the Nationalists were able to increase the international stature of China and to secure the removal of most of the unequal treaties” (Bedeski 1992: 47–8). Military primacy in GRS4 unification [M] Jiang Jieshi has been blamed as the man who lost China, yet his accomplishments under most difficult circumstances remain underrated. His use of railways in fighting warlord enemies on several fronts was an innovation in Chinese warfare. His pursuit of Communists on their Long March enabled the Guomindang to impose authority on the wayward provinces of the southwest, (Chang 2005: 135–7). Scorned by patriotic youths for attacking Chinese Communists while avoiding confrontation with the Japanese armies, Jiang Jieshi responded that the Japanese were a “disease of the skin, while the Communists were a disease of the heart” – a metaphor that proved accurate. Succeeding to the mantle of Sun Yatsen, after outmaneuvering two nonmilitary rivals Wang Jingwei and Hu Hanmin, Jiang focused on securing the territory of the state – pursuing the consolidation of the revolution Sun had termed “military government” (zhunzheng) – a necessary transition to increase political order and [Sa] for the next phase – political tutelage (xunzheng), which would be followed by constitutional government (xianzheng). The promised transition of the Republic began fulfillment after the war, but reached fruition only in Taiwan, where democracy has opened the Pandora’s Box of self-determination. External relations [ER] On balance, the mainland RNS3 was partially successful in transforming the collapsed Qing Empire into a proto-MSNS. After the false start of 1911, the Guomindang restructured itself along Leninist lines and built a formidable army that defeated or absorbed warlord armies plaguing the country. Shortly after its establishment the new Nanjing government embarked on programs of national construction and planned demobilization of millions of men under arms. Regional militarist resistance and the growing threat of Japan postponed the program of domestic disarmament and eclipsed what should have been the period of “Political Tutelage” in preparation for the final period of full constitutional government.

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Did the Great Powers fail China? By issuing the Open Door notes the United States and Great Britain prevented other powers from carving up the country into separate colonies and gave the empire another decade of reprieve to get its house in order. As Europe fell into two great wars, their overseas empires and mutual competition narrowed their field of vision, while Japan took advantage of opportunities presented by events. The Twenty-One Demands, the transfer of German concessions to Japan after the war, and the failure of the League of Nations to take action against Japan’s takeover of Manchuria, all indicated the demise of internationalism and primacy of national interests and nationalism in the twentieth century. Japan had benefited from the Powers’ neglect in the nineteenth century, while China suffered from it in the twentieth. Japan became one of the Great Powers and forced concessions from a weak China with its new status. Moreover, the global economic depression, the failures of international cooperation and the rise of fascism made interventionism on behalf of democracy or against aggression unlikely in that era. Within a year of GRS4 establishment, stock markets crashed in the West and the international depression brought new problems for Nationalist China. The old industrial states tightened control of their empires and erected tariff barriers against other empires and states, while the later industrializers built new empires – notably Italy, Germany, and Japan. For Japan, China offered the best prospect of an expanded empire – euphemistically termed “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.” Militant fascism and ultranationalism combined to propel the Japanese from their colony in Korea into Manchuria and then into north China and finally all of eastern China and into Southeast Asia. Their advance into Mongolia was repulsed at the 1939 battle of Halhin Gol (known as Nomonhan in Japan) by combined Russian and Mongolian forces. By pushing the Nationalist forces into southwestern China, the Japanese rolled back whatever authority the Guomindang had established in north China and created opportunities for the Communists to fill the vacuum. Moreover, the Nationalist revolution was only partially completed – leaving numerous militarists in power as long as they nominally accepted Nanjing authority. Jiang Jieshi had few illusions about Nanjing’s ability to defend the Republic against Japan and hoped that the Soviet Union would be forced into the fight against the anti-Comintern Pact on all fronts. Richard Sorge, the German Communist spy in Japan,2 kept Moscow informed of Japanese conditions and intentions. Stalin thought that as long as the Japanese armies were tied down in China and Southeast Asia, they were less of a threat to the Soviet Far East. A few days before Japan surrendered, the Soviet Union sent her troops against the Japanese – as promised at Potsdam – and reaped immense rewards – including the Kuriles, the Northern Territories, North Korea, and much industrial equipment and material from Japanese-occupied Manchuria. Jiang’s only consolation was that Stalin continued to recognize the Nationalists as the legitimate government of China after the war. Survival and consolidation of the Republic required diplomacy. The Great Powers had emasculated China in the late Qing and Japan tried to incorporate

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whole regions of China into her own empire. Although the United States and Western Europe cautiously welcomed the Chinese Nationalist revolution, support was largely symbolic. When Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931, the League of Nations did little of substance. Only the Soviet Union provided aid and support to the southern revolutionaries, largely for their own geostrategic reasons. Neither President Roosevelt (FDR) nor his emissaries understood the precariousness of the Nationalist revolution and wanted Jiang to wage war on the Japanese invaders to bolster the American efforts – a not unreasonable hope, but unrealistic given the adumbrated authority of the central government after Japan had occupied the eastern population centers. With the defeat of Japan in 1945, it was not long before civil war broke out between Nationalists and Communists. The Guomindang was unable to regain the élan and momentum of the early 1930s and lost a series of battles, evacuating to Taiwan in 1949. While the Communists consolidated their hold on the mainland, the Guomindang transformed Taiwan into an island fortress to withstand the anticipated final assault to destroy the last vestige of the GRS4. Within nine months of Beijing’s occupation by Mao’s forces, the Korean War broke out and China was soon engaged in war with the United States, forcing the postponement of Taiwan’s “liberation.” The Guomindang settled in and after initial harsh measures to secure its base, launched a series of economic reforms, which transformed the former Japanese colony into a free market and industrial dynamo. Following withdrawal from the United Nations in 1971 and de-recognition by the United States (1979), Taiwan began a series of political reforms that have made it one of the most democratic polities in Asia. The Nationalist geostrategy of national unification Looking backward, the Republican interregnum between 1911 and 1949 was a period of massive adaptation. Chinese losses in the late nineteenth century demonstrated that the ICS2 imperial meta-constitution was no longer relevant as blueprint for the Chinese state. The experiments in republicanism failed to build a Chinese MSNS that could resume governance, in no small part due to heightened vulnerability to foreign predation, natural disaster, and new strains of thought – including Communism, fascism, democracy, Christianity, and even anarchism. As well, new technology, tools of commerce, modes of association, and markets changed society and economy from below in ways that would not have been possible had the dynasty been in full control. Unlike the Ottoman Empire, a multiethnic mélange held together by sword and religion, the Chinese empire’s territory coincided with a relatively homogeneous people united by culture and a three thousand year history. The problem for a new dynasty or regime was to identify a new set of commonalities that would unite the population and replace the shattered imperial meta-constitution. Military unification and conquest of past empires had come from the north or west. By the end of the nineteenth century, China’s economic and political center of gravity had moved eastward and southward. Beijing may have been the cockpit

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of warlord politics and foreign embassies, but Shanghai, Wuhan, and Guangzhou emerged as key commercial and population centers, where the interface between Chinese and foreigners was producing new wealth and a core of new political power. Landlocked plains of Shanxi and Sichuan, where dynastic struggles had settled China’s dynastic history for millennia, became backwaters of state formation. The foreign concessions, as symbols of foreign humiliation, were sanctuaries of law and order from corrupt local officials, bandits, and warlords, as well as nuclei of modernity. These capitalist havens represented an emerging new China where science, democracy, Christianity, and cosmopolitanism beckoned to those who were despondent with old China. Coastal China and the littoral of the Yangzi (Van Slyke 1988) and West Rivers, from Dalian to Guangzhou, flourished and nourished seedlings of the new China, connected by steam shipping, linked to international markets and providing entry points for foreign merchants and missionaries. Railways linked the interior cities, creating a new geography that the nationalist Northern Expedition used to extend the [Sa] of GRS4. Southern China was the primary base of GRS4. The new capital, Nanjing, commanded the waters and connecting railways of the Yangzi basin. Triangular communication among Shanghai, Wuhan, and Guangzhou was unreliable. Large vessels traveled from Wuhan to Shanghai and to Guangzhou via river and ocean. From Wuhan to Guangzhou, however, waterways, railway, and roads were inadequate or absent. The 1911 revolt against the Qing had been triggered over financing of a railway between the two centers. It was the vital third leg of the Guomindang territorial triangle whose interior provided base areas for the Communists who had been ousted from their urban bases. Jiang Jieshi’s campaigns against the Communists in their Jiangxi base and subsequent pursuit of them on their Long March, thus served the geostrategic purpose of consolidating vital territory. Once the southern interior was controlled by Nanjing, a solid southern state, stretching from Sichuan to Shanghai would contain the wealthiest and most populous and most defensible parts of China. Japanese advances from 1931 were resisted, but the Nationalist armies were little match and the dikes of the Yellow River were breached to halt the Japanese and caused vast death and suffering to millions of Chinese. By 1939, much of northern and eastern China was Japanese-occupied, forcing the Nationalists to retreat to the southwest. Guerrillas in occupied China harassed Japanese forces, but the Nationalists were discredited by quisling Wang Jingwei, who used Nationalist symbols and his association with Sun Yat-sen to legitimize a collaborationist regime (Boyle 1972). Similar to the southern Song dynasty, the Nationalist government in exile had legitimacy of historical lineage, though constitutional rather than dynastic. “Sung T’ai-tsu was a prudent and clever statesman who saw the folly of trying prematurely to regain territories lost to the Ch’itan and the Tanguts. His first priority was to centralize and stabilize North China” (Hucker 1975: 269). We can note the similarity to Jiang Jieshi in the south during the early 1930s. Like the Song dynasty, the Nationalists lacked capacity to mount a full counterattack against the invaders, could only defend what they occupied and hope for a change in fortunes. For the Guomindang, this change occurred when the Japanese fatally

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overreached themselves at Pearl Harbour and brought the United States into the war. From that time, Jiang could devote his energies to rebuilding his national army, undermining the Communists and insuring that China’s national interests were promoted at the wartime and post-war conferences, despite FDR’s pressures to mount more offensives against the Japanese. Jiang calculated that the Japanese days of glory were numbered and that the real battle for supremacy would be against the Communists. In the civil war between the Communists and Nationalists, the latter had a number of significant advantages. Guomindang military forces remained largely intact during the war and were augmented by American aid. They controlled the major lines of communication and quickly reoccupied the cities. The Communists, on the other hand, received little support from the Soviet Union, which had been busy fighting the Germans. Before the war, Mao’s partisans had shifted their strategy from class struggle to patriotic resistance and challenged the Nationalists to give up their campaign to exterminate Communism. Jiang Jieshi reluctantly relented during his captivity in the Xian Incident of 1936. During the anti-Japanese resistance, the Communists based their strategy on the countryside, the rural areas where 80% of China’s population lived and worked. The failure of the Nationalists to win the civil war could be attributed to several factors: ●

●

●

●

Using a strategy of controlling railways and cities that had worked in the Northern Expedition against warlords, but was counterproductive against rural guerrilla tactics of the CCP. Failing to control runaway inflation, which ruined many capitalist supporters of the regime and destroyed government fiscal credit and credibility. Failure to win adequate foreign support for the regime. The Guomindang later blamed the Yalta Agreement between Stalin and FDR for the Communist sanctuary it created in the northeast. Failure to mobilize peasant and intelligentsia support for the Nationalist state.

Perhaps the fundamental flaw of Jiang Jieshi was to treat the nation-building task in 1945 as a continuation of the Northern Expedition’s second phase and not recognize that the Guomindang no longer monopolized the nationalist message. Wartime anti-Japanese resistance of the Communists in North China certified them as front-line fighters at one with the peasantry. Their “hearts and mind” mobilization was highly effective, while Jiang Jieshi continued his chessboard strategy of seizing key points to exercise sovereignty. For the millions of peasants under arms during and after the anti-Japanese war, the Communists promised direct benefits. The Nationalists initially won battles, but lost the war. The larger historical issue was the failure of GRS4 to complete actualization of Chinese sovereignty and to create a viable MSNS, which can be attributed to several factors: ●

A century of decline and dissipation of ICS2 created a monumental task for the Guomindang under the best of circumstances. The erosion of the Qing

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●

●

147

dynasty began in the early 1800s. Subsequent developments, including the Opium Wars, the unequal treaties, the Taiping and Nian rebellions, and the Boxer uprisings, demonstrated the increasing inability of the Manchu government to provide basic security to the empire. Imperial weakness encouraged foreign predatory states to seek concessions and advantages at China’s expense and became a negative object lesson for the Meiji reformers on the costs of nonmodernization. By 1911, the imperial government was a shadow of the great reigns of emperors Qianlong and Kangxi, as it sought an extension of its mandate by approving constitutional changes – too little and too late. The RNS3 faced a near-impossible task of constructing a MSNS out of the ruins of the monarchy, with actual sovereignty dissipated among various regional warlords. A legacy of foreign intervention limited the freedom of the Guomindang to complete the sovereign state. The first unequal treaties3 were imposed on China after the Opium Wars. This extraterritoriality meant that foreigners in China would be tried in courts and under laws of their home countries for crimes committed in China. China was also not allowed to set tariff rates for imports. Furthermore, a system of concessions – virtual colonies – was set up on Chinese territory. Not abrogated until the early 1940s – while China was under occupation by the Japanese – these restrictions on Chinese sovereignty belied Wilsonian proclamations of international equality. Even before the full Japanese invasions from 1937, the Guomindang was at war against two military enemies, which postponed peaceful reconstruction of the state. Although the Northern Expedition had nominally defeated or absorbed major warlords, the continued existence of their provincial power and armies rendered their support tenuous and undependable. The second enemy was the most intractable – the Communists had been partners of the Guomindang until Jiang Jieshi preemptively (1927) launched a coup against them to prevent a Soviet-backed takeover of the Nationalist revolution. Subsequently the Communists fled to the rural hinterlands, launched several abortive uprisings and established their own “soviets” with militias and armies. Nanjing launched a series of extermination campaigns to clear out the Communists. Many criticized the Guomindang for its apparent fixation on destroying the remnants of the “rural reformers,” at the expense of other, more pressing problems of state-building – such as resisting the Japanese. Jiang had seen their infiltration into the Guomindang, labor unions, rural institutions and the intelligentsia after party formation in 1921. Stalin and Trotsky intended the CCP to be the vehicle for extending the Bolshevik revolution into Asia and continuation of the Guomindang (GMD)–CCP united front would have earned further hostility and opposition from anti-Communist, anti-Russian Britain and Japan. In their retreat and exile from the major cities, the growing Communist strength in the rural areas of south-central China interfered with Nanjing consolidation of territory. The core power base was the lower

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The state in Qing and Republican China Yangzi River basin, from Wuhan to Shanghai. It was relatively wealthy and the rivers could transport troops to hot spots. The second leg of the base was the coastal connection between Shanghai and Canton (Guangzhou). To close this triangle by land required completion of the railway connecting Wuhan and Guangzhou – through hinterlands infested with bandits and communists. Similar to the Southern Song dynasty,4 the Nanjing government fought to regain lost lands. Jiang Jieshi avoided fighting a hamstrung war by taking control of the government himself, eclipsing his rivals Wang Jingwei and Hu Han-min. The timing of the Nationalist revolution was not fortuitous in terms of international events. Japanese modernization in the late nineteenth century was conducive to forming a state that mimicked the European counterparts – industrialized and liberal at home (based on law and constitution), expansive and colonizing abroad. In contrast, the European blows to ICS2 failed to stimulate major reform as in Japan, but had the opposite effect of eroding the Chinese state during one of its periodic dynastic declines. Those injuries, even adding Japan as one of the injuring parties, not only undermined the Qing Empire, but also dissolved much legitimacy remaining to the traditional system. A further example of ill-timing was the victory of the Nationalist revolution just a year prior to the global depression which stimulated the industrial nations to renounce free trade in favor of high tariffs and to abandon the gold standard – both of which wrought severe damage on China’s fragile trade and investment picture. Finally, the initial optimism of implementing constitutional democracy in the Guomindang Republic was quickly suffocated by the rise of international communism and fascism eclipsing the attractions of liberal democracy as desired state-form. When conditions for a fully sovereign democracy emerged after World War II, the Guomindang was suffering from demoralization in contrast to the energizing effects of peace on the Communists. History was cruel to GRS4 and by 1949 it appeared on the brink of extinction.

Evaluating GRS4 – Formula Three The GRS4 was at its [Sa] high point during the decade 1928–37, but never gained full control of continental China. It continues existence today on Taiwan and has adapted to new political and social conditions, notably democratization and tolerance of a much more Taiwanese orientation. The Nationalist movement introduced the GRS4 meta-constitution to China and imposed it until evicted out of eastern China by Japanese invasion. After the Japanese defeat in 1945, the Nationalist Republic attempted to resume its control of territory ruled by dynasties since Qin, but was ousted from the mainland by the Communists in 1949. The Republican meta-constitution survives and flourishes in Taiwan today, although its future may be precarious in the face of a vanishing hope of reinstalling a Three People’s Principles-based government on the mainland.

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Recapitulation of GRS4 The major dimensions of GRS4 actual sovereignty can be inventoried in Formula Three: [Sa]  (HSp  Op), /Ep, /M, PF, /ER Herein, [Sa] of GRS4 is a function of: ●

●

●

●

[HSp], the human security of persons. The conditions of legal order conducive to peaceful commerce and economic production were weak throughout China, though more evident in foreign-controlled areas. Banditry, confiscation, floods, and famines plagued many communities. Entrepreneurs and intellectuals found the foreign enclaves more stable and open than the territory nominally held by the Guomindang. One must conclude that citizenship in GRS4 brought few benefits of security to most persons living in China during its mainland tenure. [Op], obligation to the state. Despite party dictatorship, control of the education system, a new taxation apparatus, and other institutions of government that were emerging, most Chinese had only a tenuous sense of identification with GRS4 and thus relatively little commitment to its success. Family, clan, and local institutions were more immediate and durable than the distant Nanjing government. Patriotic orientation to a national entity called “China” and the concomitant obligations to participate in politics, pay taxes, obey laws, and serve in the military, remained undeveloped. Unlike ICS2 which interwove religion, monarchy, the literati/bureaucracy, and family into a cohesive fabric, the GRS4 remained completely secular, had a President who lacked the mystique of the Son of Heaven, recruited a bureaucracy based on connections or specialized skills and often used family connections in public affairs – a major source of corruption. Political Obligation [Op] for most citizens remained tentative or nonexistent, while a significant minority, led and controlled by the Communists, actively opposed GRS4. Thus, obligation to support the GRS4 was a weak though slightly positive vector. [Ep], political economy. Optimism and a flurry of major new development projects characterized the early Nanjing government, but national defense spending and global depression, accompanied by major natural disasters, negated the initial positive outlook. Continued foreign control of tariffs and high-value industries further decreased the positive effect of the modern national government. Abolition of the likin (internal transit duties) helped somewhat, but enforcement remained difficult. The loss of Manchuria to Japan in 1931 removed a major area of agriculture, resources, and industry from Nanjing control. These factors indicate a negative trend of political economy during GRS4. [M], military force. No state can emerge without a unified military force to protect its territory, defend peace and order, and enforce decisions of

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The state in Qing and Republican China government. The demise of the Qing era of ICS2 had been preceded by persistent weakening of its military capacity and fragmentation of authority among provincial militarists. The superiority of foreign armies was demonstrated several times and in the Qing humiliation of the empire in the Sino-Japanese War (1894–95). After the ineffective RNS3, the GRS4 was established by force of arms. Jiang Jieshi dominated as leader of the GRS4 as commander of the army and led in defeating major warlords and ousting the Communists from eastern China. Overwhelmed by Japanese forces, his armies lost the momentum gained in the unification period prior to 1937. Incomplete military control of Chinese territory by the Nanjing government was the most important element in China’s incomplete sovereignty. PF, political friction. With weak and diminished government authority in many parts of the country plus the proliferation of arms and soldiers, policy conflicts in Nanjing often erupted into fighting between the center and various militarists. Party congresses became the creature of the presidential faction while defections, exiles, and assassinations of dissidents were common. Factions within the military and party demanded a strong man take command, though military dictatorship alienated many supporters of the Guomindang. Provincial militarists often had their own networks of support which enabled them to resist central command. In 1934, Nanjing launched a new campaign against the Communists who had broken out of the encirclement and embarked on the so-called Long March. Nationalist armies pursued and installed Nanjing officials enroute to bring the wayward provinces under central control. Having enjoyed autonomy for more than two decades, a number of provinces resisted recentralization. Political friction between the provinces and central government, party and army, various party factions and local gentry and provincial authorities rendered mobilization of China’s political, economic, and social resources for national survival and modernization extremely difficult. Political factions have been a common feature of Confucian and post-Confucian societies of East Asia (Moody 1988: 7–8). At the zenith of GRS4, ideology and interests created cleavages which undermined the effectiveness of the Nationalist revolution. The party dissipated energy and resources in factional struggle after the death of Sun, and elimination of warlords was one of the few points of agreement among the Guomindang leadership (Tien 1972: 8–11). One leader, Wang Jingwei, later became a Japanese puppet during the occupation. Another party notable, Hu Hanmin, actively opposed Jiang Jieshi up to his death in 1936. Both left and right wings viewed Jiang as a new warlord and feared he would militarize the revolution and fundamentally distort Sun Yat-sen’s vision for a new China.

The Guomindang was modeled after the (CPSU), with its formality of “democratic centralism” and reality of central dictatorship. Jiang wished to accumulate the power of a Lenin or Mussolini or Japanese shogun (a Japanese term meaning literally “general”), but the reality of foreign concessions, warlords, Communist bases, and dissension within the party made it impossible. To neutralize and

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overcome the multiple centrifugal forces tearing China apart, a supreme dictator was needed. Jiang identified his ambitions with China’s national interests and his command of the national army facilitated the emerging authoritarian state in Nanjing.5 The party held its congresses and established government structures to reflect Sun Yat-sen’s prescriptions and vowed to move to constitutional government as early as possible. The incompleteness of China’s actualized sovereignty, however, meant that Nanjing’s enemies – including the regional militarists – provided sanctuaries for dissidents and rebels. Political friction was constant and the combination of undeveloped democratic institutions, national fragmentation and the suspicion of an agreed effective head of government with concentrated powers exacerbated quarrels within the state. The Guomindang’s priority of national unification could only be accomplished by military means under the existing conditions of incomplete sovereignty. [ER], external relations By the 1920s, the foreign powers had possession and control of prime cities of coastal and interior China. From the Nationalist perspective, even foreign Christian missions were spearheads of Western imperialism, since protection of missionaries was deemed to be a prime responsibility of governments. Several incidents of confrontation between Nationalist armies and foreigners occurred, as the latter claimed virtual sovereignty of territory within their spheres of influence. There was relatively little effort on the part of the foreign powers to facilitate China’s transition to MSNS. Diplomatic recognition of the GRS4 was tempered by experience of the Bolshevik revolution, where the Soviet state had refused to honor the debts incurred by the tsarist regime, arguing that those moneys had been used to repress the revolution and were thus null and void. The Guomindang declared that the new government would accept the debts of previous governments, although this added considerable burdens to financial obligations. The price of foreign normalization also included acceptance of the status quo of the foreign concessions, although the British granted some minor retrocession of territories. The Japanese were intractable and dominated whole provinces after Nanjing became the capital or they supported local warlords as proxies. In external relations, GRS4 was severely restricted from achieving full sovereignty over people and territory and suffered major diminution the area under its jurisdiction. Recognition of the Nationalist government in Nanjing required that China accept inferior status of reduced territory and unequal treaties. Moreover, its antiCommunist policy was vital to assure support from Japan, Great Britain, and the United States. A bolshevized China would undermine the long-standing containment of Russia that Britain had pursued since at least the Crimean War and Jiang Jieshi was the most promising leader to continue this policy. (Jiang may have been restrained from eradicating the Communist Party of China out of concern for his son, Jiang Jingguo, who was a virtual hostage in Moscow.) The GRS4 actualized sovereignty over contiguous territory under severe circumstances. The state became the core of the modern Chinese Republic, with the

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primary characteristics of a MSNS. Had the Japanese not invaded and discredited the Guomindang, giving the Communists a reprieve from destruction in 1936 and years of opportunity to expand in north China, the GRS4 might have reformed itself, transforming into an authoritarian ‘then democratic’ polity, as it did on a smaller scale in Taiwan after 1949. The GRS4 demonstrated that China could be transformed into a MSNS under favourable conditions. The Guomindang weakened the regional militarists who dominated the country in the first decades of the century, demonstrating an ability to prevent alliances and coalitions against the central government and in retrospect, probably cleared the way for the rapid conquest of China by the Communists after the war. The Guomindang reestablished the principle of a unified China under one government, something that was not self-evident in the chaos of Communists, warlords, and foreign concessions. The Communists claimed to lead a revolution, but they also seized state power from the Guomindang – power that had been dearly paid for. Had the Communists, through a quirk of fate, come to power before the war, they would have had to fight and defeat the warlords one by one, resist the invasion of the Japanese, face even greater recalcitrance from the other major powers and had Stalin’s Soviet Union as its sole ally – an unlikely formula for success.

Claiming sovereignty [Sc] The GRS4 claimed to be successor of the RNS3. Thus, while actualized sovereignty of GRS4 begins in 1928, its claimed sovereignty dates back to the beginning of RNS3 (1912 remains Year One for the GRS4 calendar on Taiwan), in which the earlier version of the Guomindang played a significant role in founding. However, there were significant differences between the contents of these two regimes – sufficient to distinguish them as meta-constitutions. Human security was the most important output of the traditional Chinese ICS2 meta-constitution, which required [Sa] as precondition. The fallback position was the core family unit of society, so the Chinese state required no Hobbesian social contract to preserve life when actual sovereignty of the state collapsed or diminished. Family – not raw nature – was the alternative civil society without the state. With the decline and demise of the Qing dynasty in the nineteenth century, twenty-one centuries of political order based on imperial [Sc] and [Sa] terminated. In its place, China’s new elites attempted to graft the Europe-derived MSNS onto Chinese society, with disappointing results. Part of the problem was the durability of the old values and institutions which persisted decades after destruction of the monarchy. Based on family relationships, the fragmented social order witnessed neodynastic claims and coups by warlords and revolutionaries while aggressive states fished in troubled waters. The postimperial Republic had to create a new meta-constitution which established a concept of citizenship and a legal system based on equality, if Japan’s success were to be matched. China’s challenge was to import the democratic, legalistic, and individualistic European MSNS structure into a society which had

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successfully maintained the human security of its subjects for two or more millennia without democracy, strict rule of law, and individualism. There was the new and powerful attraction of Japanese state-building, or the Russian revolution, or even Italian fascism, as shortcuts to the nation-state, but the Guomindang, led by Sun Yat-sen, announced their end-vision as an American-type constitutional democracy, with some traditional Chinese characteristics. From 1926 until his death on Taiwan (April 5, 1975), Jiang Jieshi maneuvered and fought to establish Sun’s envisioned Republic as the Chinese MSNS. Today it exists as the fragment of a state on Taiwan, but also symbolizes the kind of state that might have emerged on the mainland had the Guomindang been victorious. Pattern of claimed sovereignty: The GRS4 meta-constitution World War I and the Russian revolution were events that changed how Chinese political actors viewed the MSNS. The Western liberal state was no longer the apparently monolithic and invincible modern industrial military machine of the past, but had shattered its apparent unity and the component states of the West had turned on each other, thus weakening the Chinese adaptation of the MSNS (RNS3) of its legitimacy as state model. The Russian revolution demonstrated how a determined and disciplined party could seize state power and bend it to its own vision. The model of a revolutionary party, with its own army, inspired the Guomindang to adapt its organization to follow elements of the Bolshevik strategy and to ally with the CCP in a common goal of establishing a new state. The mutual enemy of foreign interventions and native militarists united the Nationalists and Communists in the unlikely alliance until the 1927 capture of Shanghai. Although Communists in China often claim to be carrying out Sun Yat-sen’s political vision, their core program of class struggle and subordination to the Soviet Union was at odds with the umbrella nationalism of the Guomindang. Moreover, despite undeniable revolutionary credentials, Sun’s program called for selective restoration of ICS2 institutions – notably the civil service examinations and censorate – in his design for a five-power constitution. His plans for government borrowed from the United States with three of the powers being the executive, legislative, and judicial Yuan, or Councils. For the sake of revolutionary success, the Guomindang was reorganized from a democratic electioneering party into a Leninist agitprop organization to seize and manage state power, plus the addition of a revolutionary army. Sun’s three-stage plan called for military unification, political tutelage, and finally, constitutional government. Political tutelage was the Guomindang’s equivalent of the dictatorship of the proletariat of Marxism–Leninism. But unlike Communist states, who allegedly await achievement of full Communism before dissolving their dictatorship, the Guomindang moved for abolition in word and deed and despite incomplete [Sa], introduced democratic government on Taiwan in the 1980s, partially forced by rising Taiwanese nationalism. Sun Yat-sen and the Nationalists sought to restore the order, unity, and stability that had existed under the imperial meta-constitution, while trying to import the

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institutions that made the Western and more recently, the Japanese, MSNS powerful. The Guomindang project was to create a substitute for the imperial metaconstitution, not to abandon it totally. In this, the GRS4 shared a goal with traditional dynastic founders – to reconstruct a unified political order that would provide security for the Chinese people in their territory, be strong enough to resist incursions from surrounding neighbors and harmonize with the cosmic order, except that in modern China, the “cosmic order” has been replaced by an everchanging “global order.” Sun Yat-sen accepted social Darwinism as the new natural order – and to him, China’s (apparently) stagnant population indicated the nation was moving toward extinction as other nations increased their populations. In fact, China’s population increased from 423 million in 1910, to 546 million in 19506 and this was a period of major outmigration. There was little evidence of a stable population as Sun Yatsen had claimed. The average annual increase of 0.7% was below replacement growth by modern standards, and would have led to population decrease. As in previous epochs when the state was weak, intense family-based Chinese society proved capable of providing considerable protection for persons. The penetration of Western science, medicine, and technology brought in benefits of modernity despite little state sponsorship. The development of the GRS4 meta-constitution went through five overlapping stages. First was the Beijing Republic (RNS3), established to replace the Qing monarchy. Second, was the Guomindang/Nationalist government established in Nanjing by revolution and conquest of the Northern Expedition. Third, was the wartime government in Chongqing, while the eastern population centers were occupied by the Japanese and northern rural areas infiltrated by the Communists. Fourth, from 1945–49, the Nationalist Republic reestablished itself in Nanjing, but was forced to fight a civil war against the Communists. Fifth is the rump government in exile re-situated in Taiwan, while claiming to represent the legitimate Republic of China. Having been at the brink of extinction in 1949, GRS4 was given new life in the Sino-American hostilities of the Korean War and the Cold War that followed. Taiwan became a symbolic bastion of democracy, although until 1980s liberalization was democratic more in comparison to the Communist mainland than fitting the Western standard of democracy. Taiwan became a key strategic link in the American chain of allies and bases that stretched from the Aleutians through Japan, Okinawa, Taiwan, and the Philippines. The United States switched to recognition of Beijing from Taipei in 1979 and Congress passed the TRA (Taiwan Relations Act) to provide weapons’ sales and other links. The Guomindang state was forced by circumstances to adapt to international realities and maintained its core ideas, and also adopting authoritarianism as a transitional strategy to reach constitutional government today. Its survival as the ROCOT prevents the PRC from completion of [Sa] necessary to be a full MSNS.

9

Contemporary China’s incomplete sovereignty Fusion, succession, and adaptation

Multiple meta-constitutions in the twentieth century Every state – notwithstanding the Hobbesian view as rational contract – is a legacy passed from one generation to the next, and is based on inescapable history. Twentieth-century China has witnessed a succession of state-building attempts, each incorporating lessons and adapting institutions from what were perceived the dominant and most successful on the global scale. RNS3 was a variation of the liberal MSNS, while GRS4 drew inspiration from China’s own ICS2, American democracy and several contemporary authoritarian states, including the Soviet Union. In 1949, the SCS5 followed the USSR in important dimensions – industrialization strategy, Communist dictatorship as government, central planning, collectivization of agriculture, cult of personality, massive repression of “class enemies,” and foreign policy. After Nikita Khrushchev’s quasi-repudiation of Stalin, Mao Zedong pursued establishment of MCS6 – an original state-form, but one that proved corrosive and destructive to human security. Since the 1978 reforms, DMS7 has modified or abandoned central features of its two predecessors, with major success in modernization, though China remains an incomplete MSNS without inclusion of Taiwan. The Communist victory in 1949 defeated GRS4 but did not destroy it, for it established new [Sa] on Taiwan, following fifty years of Japanese colonial occupation. The continued existence of the GRS4 meta-constitution, based on actualized sovereignty over Taiwan territory, consigns the PRC [Sa] to state incompleteness. Beijing’s unfulfilled claims to the territory occupied by GRS4 are also a continuing source of potential conflict in the region, should the Communists decide to complete Chinese sovereignty by force of arms. Furthermore, the potential emergence of a new meta-constitution, TIS8, threatens the eventual reconciliation of GRS4 and DMS7. TIS8 existence would be the product of China’s incomplete territorial sovereignty and almost ironically, the realization of GRS4 democratic vision in a subregion of China – the culmination of democratic self-determination. Despite the opportunities provided by the nearunification of China in 1949, fissures emerged within the Communist movement that can be described as competing meta-constitutions. The history of the

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Communist state since 1949 has been dominated by dialectic almost Hegelian in simplicity when abbreviated as meta-constitutions: ● ● ●

Thesis – SCS5 Antithesis – MCS6 Synthesis – DMS7

Far from resolving this dialectic, there is today another state dialogue emerging, with both GRS4 and DMS7 in agreement on a single Chinese MSNS, while TIS8 poses a new possibility – a Taiwan MSNS and one (or several) Chinese states. In this first decade of the millennium, the transformation of the Communist state continues to unfold. In contrast to the monumental longevity and hegemony of the ICS2, China today, if we include Taiwan, manifests three competing meta-constitutions. Despite the long civil war between the Communists (CCP) and Nationalists (Guomindang), their respective meta-constitutions are closer today than they have been in history, as the DMS7 continues to selfmodify toward a less totalitarian and more property-oriented capitalist system. Both the GRS4 and the DMS7 are fundamentally opposed to the TIS8. The TIS8 is arguably a unique case, applying only to the specific territory of Taiwan. Even if it had no wider application than Taiwan sovereignty, it would be a serious challenge to the meta-constitutional claims of both GRS4 and DMS7, and is not be acceptable to either. Beyond Taiwan, TIS8 projects the possibility of other regions and provinces seeking autonomy. Tibet and Inner Mongolia, though demographically overwhelmed by Han immigration in recent decades, still contain restive ethnic populations who might welcome autonomy and independence. The long-term policy of the Communist state has been to actualize sovereignty over territory by equalizing modernization. For decades, Shanghai and Guangzhou were held back, forced to subsidize the less developed parts of the country. DMS7 established Special Economic Zones (SEZ) and encouraged foreign trade, with enormous benefits to Shanghai, Guangzhou, and other seaports with historical and geographical advantages of access to global commerce. This has led to the increasing gap between the coastal regions and the interior, which the SCS5 and MCS6 sought to mitigate. A DMS7 thrust for development of China’s western regions (Lu 2004) seeks to reduce the imbalance, but will probably not see the dynamic investment and industrialization that has characterized the Pearl River delta, for example.

Actualizing SCS5 sovereignty In 1949, the Chinese Communist revolution ushered in a new political order. Officials and capitalists of the Guomindang state who surrendered were incorporated in the new structures. Not only was their expertise and capital needed to rebuild the country, but generous treatment advertised the spirit of the new regime and blunted the resistance of those who continued to oppose. The Common

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Programme of 1950 and the Constitution of 1954 proclaimed the “New Democracy” which the Communists advertised to be in direct lineage to Sun Yat-sen (Bedeski 1977). Reality deviated from propaganda, as the two earliest laws of the regime attacked the foundations of the old society. The Marriage Law (1950) liberated women from “feudal familism,” and ended their subordination in law and custom. The Land Reform Law of the same year launched a campaign to take land from landlords and distribute it to the landless, frequently accomplished by humiliation, torture, and execution of the old landowners. Subsequent collectivization of the land was far more destructive of old Chinese traditions and institutions than all preceding policies. It had an immediate, direct effect on 80 percent of the population and an indirect effect on almost all Chinese through their families . . . No sooner had land redistribution been completed, however, than the regime began to adopt a collectivization policy, which gathered speed and grew steadily more radical. (Guillermaz 1976: 87–88) The state characteristics of the period 1949–55, summarized as SCS5, while claiming to have roots in Sun Yat-sen’s programs, were similar to the Soviet state of Lenin and Stalin: ●

● ●

● ● ● ●

● ●

A single-party dictatorship, with a façade of “democratic parties” in place of the Soviet party of the proletariat. Elimination of private property, stigmatization, and demonization of capitalism. Control of all media and associations, persecution of religion, undermining of traditional family. Thought control through indoctrination, “study” and mutual surveillance. Central economic planning and massive confiscation of private property. State control of agriculture. Establishment of vast gulags, massive violations of basic human rights in the name of historical necessity. Apotheosis of single charismatic leader – Mao Zedong. Modified ethnic enclaves – instead of nominal Soviet “Republics,” China established province-level ethnic autonomous regions.

Up to 1956, Chinese Communists emulated the Soviet state, which appeared to be the most appropriate model for Chinese consolidation and development. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) had undertaken forced industrialization before and after the “Great Patriotic War,” acquired considerable territory in Eastern Europe, held out and defeated the Nazi war machine, stood up to the United States and international capitalism since its founding, and recovered after the war. Its brutality was no obstacle to the Chinese Communists, who were familiar with purges and violence in their own experience, and who saw historical necessity as driving all politics and negating any sentiments of natural rights.

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Moreover, the Sino-Soviet alliance of 1950 saw a victorious Communism across the Eurasian land mass, and was seemingly unstoppable. Subordinating their revolution to Soviet global aims was not on the agenda of Chinese Communists after they came to power, but the alliance had that consequence. Stalin’s encouragement of Kim Il-Sung’s invasion of South Korea led directly to massive Chinese involvement and confrontation with the United States less than a year after “liberation” (Goncharov 1993). The Soviets had stripped machinery from Manchuria’s factories when they “liberated” the region from Japan – after the Japanese had surrendered. The Gao Gang-Rao Shushi affair and Peng Dehuai’s pro-Soviet declarations at the Sixth Plenum further demonstrated the risk of intimate cooperation. Under the umbrella of Mao’s “New Democracy” in SCS5, the CCP appeared willing to share (only symbolically) a sliver of power with nonCommunists in the early 1950s. The revival of the United Front was one way to secure cooperation from two million former KMT personnel. Many in the CCP were of peasant stock, poorly educated, and unskilled. For economic development, CCP needed help and cooperation from nonCommunists and intellectuals, at least until their voluntary services were no longer needed (Zheng 1997: 42–3). The Hundred Flowers Movement marked the beginning of their repression under MCS6. Behavior of the “bourgeois intellectuals” in the Hundred Flowers campaign was taken as evidence that their thought reform had not taken hold as firmly as the party had hoped (Moody 1977: 59). Although Maoist rhetoric carried a whiff of liberalization, it had the effect of bringing closet dissidence out into the open; according to MacFarquhar, Mao’s speech “On Contradiction” remained a document that promised a new deal, whether considered as “by far the most radical repudiation of Stalinism” produced by any Communist country or as the embodiment of a “vision of a totalitarian society by consent.” It still emphasized persuasion, not coercion; it still advocated a restrained attitude towards strikes; it still promised the rehabilitation of those who had been wrongfully treated in the campaigns against counter-revolutionaries, it still condemned bureaucratism. It reaffirmed the hundred flowers policy and long-term coexistence and mutual supervision between the CCP and the democratic parties. (MacFarquhar 1973: 269)

Claims of MCS6 sovereignty Nikita Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin1 signalled to Mao that Stalin’s successors were bringing an end to the Bolshevik revolution as they perceived it and that the alliance was evolving in a dangerous direction. Coexistence with the United States was one symptom, and Mao reacted with a series of campaigns and actions to prevent at home the post-Stalinist revisionism he perceived in the Soviet Union. From the close of the Hundred Flowers Movement through the GLF, and again in the Cultural Revolution, Mao was attempting to establish a new

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kind of state that deviated not only from the SCS5 meta-constitution, but from practically any other state-form in Chinese history. Mao was attempting to build a new state order based on disorder (“continuing revolution”), and to reverse history by starting with ideology, using it as the design for new institutions, and anticipating that economy and politics would necessarily follow. The MCS6 reversed SCS5 assumptions and values. In place of political order [Vo], Mao called for struggle to depose existing authorities who were “taking the capitalist road” – a revolution against the revolution. Instead of party hierarchy, Maoists called for egalitarian institutions – the people’s communes and the revolutionary committees. All knowledge under Mao was political, and strongly subjective. The phrase “red and expert” captured the spirit of knowledge – it was valid only if its producers and holders had the proper revolutionary mindset. Control of the military was essential to insure that MCS6 proponents had the high ground of [Sa] to carry out their state transformation. By purging the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), installing his “close comrade-in-arms” Lin Biao as Minister of Defence, and accelerating the politicization of the armed forces through a number of campaigns, Mao made it into the backbone of the state, and subordinated the party. The breakdown of vital social and economic functions during the Cultural Revolution led to near mutiny and the eventual removal of Lin Biao. Intra-party conflict [PF] intensified in the Maoist state (1956–76), and the two-line struggle was as much about state-form as it was about policy and personality. Mao’s followers mobilized the youth of China as a corps to carry out central instructions and provide the yeast to ferment a new revolutionary generation. The heyday of Maoism could be characterized as a postrevolutionary reign of terror, when the revolution devoured its own children. The extremism of Mao’s stillborn state-form corroded its own foundations and ended with his death in 1976, but not without massive damage to China. The MCS6 was based on political knowledge [Kp ] that tapped into the emotional base of revolutionary partisans, especially in envy of the urban rich and foreigntainted, anxiety to conform, and religious passion to be part of something larger than oneself. Its love-object was channelled into the iconic Mao Zedong, who personified wisdom, national patriotism, and a visionary future for tens of millions of adolescents and teens who knew few of the hardships of the old society first-hand, and accepted the educational lessons from schools and state-run organizations. At least one intellectual saw Maoism as rooted in a strain of Chinese tradition: Li Zehou also was highly critical of Maoist voluntarism with its exaggerated emphasis on erratic political campaigns and disregard of rational planning and goal-oriented social organization. However, he traced its origins not to Marxian epistemology but dominant strains within the indigenous tradition, particularly the Wang Yangming school of neo-Confucianism. . . . Mao’s personality traits, policy preferences, leadership style, and their appeal to broad masses of Chinese people could all be traced to these deep-rooted premises of the traditional Chinese outlook. (Misra 1998: 75–6)

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Instead of liberating the energy of the Chinese people to pursue accumulation of wealth, Mao used the controlling apparatus of the state in an ambitious attempt to restructure society. He recognized the faults of the Soviet state and saw modern socialism metamorphosing into ossified bureaucratism, so he created a third way – mass mobilization and permanent revolution. Following the capitalist road was not an option. The Japanese miracle was a decade away and in any event, it is unlikely the Chinese Communists would have copied their former enemy. The political economy was a major battlefield between SCS5 and MCS6. Even before the GLF, the state had taken over the economy. Through collectivizing agriculture, closing the grain markets, institutionalizing unified purchase and supply, and, most important, instituting the system of grain rationing, the state separated the peasants from their harvest. A peasant’s work effort was no longer sufficient to secure even a subsistence livelihood for himself or his family. The worth of his labor and his share of the harvest was determined by the state and obtained from the collective. A peasant depended on the collective for his economic well-being. At the same time, these regulations inflated the value of grain, making it a currency of exchange. (Oi 1989) The GLF originated in the first wave of decentralization in 1955–56 with a critical reassessment of the performance of the Soviet economic model (as applied to China) during the first five-year plan. Mao was already impatient with the slow pace of economic modernization and social transformation. He judged that the Soviet model had not provided effective incentives for economic effort. “To accelerate economic development China must more effectively mobilize people’s initiative. The higher people’s enthusiasm and initiative, the greater, faster, better, and more economical results production would yield” (Shirk 1993: 159). During the GLF, multiple villages which comprised a local marketing district were designated as a single commune. Backyard furnaces and unproven schemes of close and deep planting exhausted the peasants and ruined crops. Collective sharing among several villages removed a major incentive to maximize labor efforts, since the lax and lazy would share the harvest with the diligent and industrious. Many farmers let their fields go fallow rather than submit to forced sharing, resulting nationwide famine, exacerbated by poor weather. The few years of reconstruction after the massive GLF-induced famines were characterized by Mao as betrayal of the Chinese revolution and his antidote was the Cultural Revolution, which assured a “continuing revolution.” This poisonous romantic vision of a state in perpetual ferment was antithetical to the SCS5, and briefly established itself as the MCS6 – the “Maoist Communist State.” It vanished unlamented with Mao’s death in 1976, and had damaged Chinese society to the extent that it remains the current leadership’s implicit negative example of what China must avoid.

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Nathan rejects classifying Mao’s China as totalitarian, a category which he describes as having six characteristics: “a totalist ideology, a single ruling party led by a dictator, a secret police that carries out political terror, a monopoly of mass communications, a monopoly of political organizations, and monopolistic state control of the economy” (Nathan 1997: 49–50). On several counts he regards the Maoist regime as having departed from the “classical concept of totalitarianism,” but also having had several totalitarian features, including the broad scope of political control, the monolithic nature of the political system, the centrality of ideological belief and terror, the aspiration to remake society, nature, and human nature, and the aim to not only control, but to mobilize people. When he lists ten features of the Maoist regime, he notes the similarities with Stalinist dictatorship and Soviet forced industrialization, and also the distinctiveness among Socialist states of Mao using the army as a crucial source of power. His reading of the Communist state sees unity between the SCS5 and MCS6, implying that differences between Mao and the moderates were in the realm of policy. However, policy alone does not capture the difference in essence between SCS5 and MCS6. The Stalinist Communist State (SCS5) saw Chinese citizens as economic animals –Socialist economic structures, reinforced by state control of media and education, would transform men into new citizens, drained of moral autonomy, of liberty in thought and action, and of private loyalties, so that they became creatures of the state – a Chinese adaptation of Stalinist totalitarianism. Mao differed in that he believed (and acted on the belief) that Soviet-type state penetration into society and economy was too limited, and that the bureaucratic state under the Communist Party took on a life of its own. In his view, SCS5 had become alienated from its revolutionary roots and from the people whose historical mission it was to lead to higher forms of existence. The SCS5 was a broker between historical necessity and society, and the MCS6 was, in Mao’s vision, historical necessity itself, banishing brokers and intermediaries and impure knowledge from society. However, in the history of revolutions, Maoism in its hyperactive stages (GLF and Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution) was analogous to the French Reign of Terror – an extreme leftist turn that was simultaneously paranoid, homicidal, and populist. Both the French and Maoist terrorism sought to purify their respective revolution and establish a totally new order – perceiving erstwhile comrades as deadly enemies. Both claimed supreme authority to set up a new kind of state which transcended all previous forms, and carried Rousseau’s General Will to its logical conclusion. Thus Maoism was not an aberration but a heresy that sought to overturn the recently established state, and produced violent conflict and chaos in the process. As in the French case, Mao’s reign of terror was followed by moderation and a Thermidorian reaction. Moderation was evident in the post-Leap reforms, and a couple of years after Mao’s death in 1976, Deng launched an implicit repudiation of Maoism that has carried the country to higher levels of power, stability, and prosperity than ever in PRC history.

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Lieberthal postulates the major difference between the MCS6 and DMS7: In a totalitarian system, the political sphere becomes coterminous with the society itself. In almost no other society has the personal been politicized to the extent it was in urban China at the height of the Cultural Revolution. The core Maoist priorities were to permeate the public and the private: egalitarianism and frugal living, political purity and class struggle, sexual prudishness and political devotion. But the reformers recognized that “intensive” economic development would require the kind of initiative and independence that were absent in a caste-ridden, ideologically driven society. (Lieberthal 1995: 146) The MCS6 was based on a peculiar vision of political knowledge that distrusted the accumulated knowledge of bourgeois humanity, since it was allegedly derived from oppressive societies of the past. Independent intellectuals were a ruthless target of the Cultural Revolution, as they were during the Hundred Flowers Movement. Mao’s Cultural Revolution caused untold numbers of deaths and suicides. At Zhongshan University (Guangzhou), the entire senior faculty of the history department was murdered, and found hanging from the trees at the university entrance (Thurston 1988: 133). The deaths of nearly thirty-five thousand people were attributed to the notorious Gang of Four who carried out Mao’s agenda. As in Stalin’s purges, Mao’s historical necessity required the physical liquidation of class enemies to make revolution complete. And as in Qin Shi Huangdi’s murders of scholars and intellectuals, nonconformist thought and memory had to be erased. The traditional family was a target of Cultural Revolution. The initial SCS5 had restructured society through legal changes enacted by the Marriage Law and the Land Reform Law, which were implemented at the basic levels of rural China. Still, family centered networks remained as the building blocks of society: the result of government induced changes in the 1950s was a new agricultural cooperative (later commune) and party structure at the top, but at the base remained brigades and teams structured around kinsmen and neighbours living where they always lived and led by natives of each village. Not all of the existing solidarities were utilized, of course, and . . . powerful corporate lineages of Kwangtung (Guangdong) had their property confiscated, their ritual centres taken over for other uses, and their poorer members mobilized to struggle against and even kill lineage leaders . . . The family as a corporate economic unit, generally headed by a male, remained the basic building block of rural life, and kept many of its old functions (support of the aged, early child care, the organization of consumption and domestic work, animal raising, and the provision of housing) even as it lost parts of other functions (the organization of daily farm labor, later socialization of the young). (Parish 1978: 321)

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Children turned against parents, and denounced them as “bloodsuckers” and reactionaries (Liang 1983: 55–60). Peer pressure and ideological fervor demonized any trace of filial piety. Husbands and wives divorced over class labels and political correctness tore families apart. The Maoist version of Marxism transmuted class status, an alleged characteristic derived from the individual’s place in the productive system of a society, into an inverted Lysenkoism, in which the economic phenotype reflected an immutable genotype, and was therefore hereditary. The basis for state dissolution of the family anchor of Chinese society had been introduced during SCS5 with invidious labeling of families by class status: Like the agrarian reform in the villages, the “Three Antis” and the “Five Antis” campaigns of 1951 provided the opportunity for carrying out this systematic work of naming and classifying in the cities as well. In 1952, practically the whole Chinese population was classified in this manner and the system included over sixty designations. Every Chinese citizen knew his own category. In all his papers and in all the files which concerned him, his class status was inevitably listed. Children turned against parents, and denounced them as “bloodsuckers” and reactionaries. (Liang 1983: 129–30) The Maoist Communist State (MCS6) was lethal to human security of tens of millions of individuals. Even after the disastrous GLF, anything that smacked of private property was forbidden. The Party outlawed all carpentry and handicrafts which were not undertaken by state-run units . . . Mao’s policies stifled recovery from the famine. In the name of egalitarianism, no one was allowed to be seen to prosper from activities such as raising poultry or selling vegetables, even if they were permitted, without attracting censure and punishment as ‘rich peasants’ . . . Anyone caught slaughtering a pig without permission would be sentenced to one or even three years in prison. (Becker 1997: 258)

Emergence of the Dengist state DMS7 Until DMS7, MCS6 citizens were barred from exercising fundamental rights. The zigzags between radical leftism and pragmatic socialism were reduced with the death of Mao in 1976. In 1978, Deng Xiaoping launched a series of reforms that brought rapid economic growth to China after uncertain beginnings in the early 1980s. By the turn of the millennium, China had traveled far from its SCS5 beginnings of the first decade of the PRC. During his lifetime, Mao was a powerful figure comparable not only to the dynastic founders of the past, especially Qin Shi Huangdi, but to contemporaries such as Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler. His vision was to move the Chinese revolution forward, to continue its momentum to avoid

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what he reckoned to be the stagnation of the Soviet revolution. The new Chinese normalcy was launched by Deng Xiaoping in 1978 in the shape of reforms, mostly economic, but intimately affecting state, society, and the legal system. In contrast to the defunct SCS5 and the dysfunctional MCS6, Deng’s new order, the “Dengist Market State” (DMS7) has been eclectic and successful in generating economic growth. The DMS7 has neither plagiarized the Soviet example as did the SCS5, nor is it oblivious to human and organizational limitations as had been the ideologically intoxicated MCS6. The DMS7 draws lessons from economic successes of Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, and Japan, while preserving party dictatorship over government and making no promises of democratization. Deng’s successors have been moderately flexible,2 and have continued to de-Marxify the state. State corporations are allowed to go bankrupt, citizens can own property, individuals can sue the party, and wealthy businessmen can gain membership in the party, but liberty remains a fragile economic ember that can be extinguished at any time. Critics who see a betrayal of fundamental principles are muted by the apparent success of the post-Mao reforms, although economic inequality and corruption may yet resurrect a larger Socialist thrust from the government. The essential structure of SCS5 government remains intact. From 1949 to the present, China has remained a single-party dictatorship. There has been little democratic reform, despite adaptation of the legal system to conform to international standards for the sake of trade and investment. Marxism-Leninism-Maoism remains the central theme of government value-claims, and the CCP remains firmly in control of all levels of government. Actualizing sovereignty [Sa ] in DMS7 Following the chaos generated by MCS6 and after Mao’s death on September 9, 1976, many of his acolytes were purged, and the state realigned to produce the DMS7, with Deng Xiaoping in command. The DMS7 meta-constitution returned the party to command of the state, and oversaw launching of a series of far-reaching reforms in the legal and economic system. Some market-type reforms had been initiated in the wake of the GLF failures, but were aborted by the Cultural Revolution. External relations [ER]. A major change had occurred in [ER], with President Nixon’s visit to China in 1972. Further progress in Sino-American relations was halted by the US President’s domestic problems with Watergate, and it was not until the end of 1978 that normalization occurred, when Deng could count on American trade and investment to underwrite his modernization program. Nixon’s Shanghai declaration that the United States regarded Taiwan as part of China was a boost to China’s claimed sovereignty [Sc] and gave the Deng pragmatists further credibility to achieve through rational economic policy and diplomacy where the Maoists had failed in bluster and intimidation. Deng’s position as Vice-Chairman of the Central Military Commission gave him control over the

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PLA, and he directed a sweeping program of modernization and professionalization which reversed Mao’s politicization. Political economy [Ep ]. In the two decades between the GLF and Deng’s reforms, there had been paradigmatic change in leading models of economic development abroad. Mainstream economists had advocated autonomous development, with high tariffs to protect domestic industrialization. These theories became part of developmental orthodoxy and gave Third World governments dominant power over trade and investment with equal opportunities for political corruption. The Philippines, one of the most promising economies of the early 1960s, sank into kleptocracy and stagnation under Marcos, with family and cronies involved in a wide range of state-protected enterprises. During the same period, Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea emerged as economic powerhouses by pursuing export-led growth. The Soviet Union and its clients sank in a miasma of economic stagnation, stifled innovation, a trading bloc tied to Soviet subsidies in energy, and central planning. Political friction [PF]. The post-Mao leadership in Beijing early recognized that the excesses of MCS6 had not only postponed, but eroded, economic growth and had dissipated central authority of the party and state. The Maoist persuasion in the two-line struggle was discredited, and many remaining Maoists were removed from power. The trauma of the twenty-year MCS6 blunted much resistance that might have confronted Deng’s pragmatic reforms, which not only appealed to commonsensical Chinese, but met with relatively little opposition within the party. A few diehard pockets remained, and purists lamented the demise of Mao’s romantic revolutionary spirit, and Deng proclaimed that it was “glorious to be rich.” Political Obligation. [Op] had a specific character in each of the three post1949 meta-constitutions: ●

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Obligation in SCS5. Under SCS5 in the early 1950s, an orthodox Marxist interpretation of citizenship focused on class solidarity. Peasants and workers and soldiers had brought about the revolution’s success, while the national bourgeoisie had made some contributions and could participate in the state by renouncing ties to international capitalism. The intelligentsia also could certify its class credentials by actively supporting the party. The national project of creating a socialist China demanded solidarity under party dictatorship. Obligation in MCS6. Mao rooted his state in the Rousseauian vision of redirecting personal loyalties, affections, and interests from society to the body politic – a condition that could only be sustained in continuous war and revolution. He tapped into a vast reservoir of human emotion to change the nation. Mao’s “obligatory voluntarism”3 had little grounding in economic realities. Many of the public works executed in the euphoria of revolutionary enthusiasm suffered in quality and planning, and often worsened conditions they were meant to improve. Maoist Communist State (MCS6) traded relative passivity of multiclass participation for the vision of a new Communist

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China’s incomplete sovereignty man – one whose selfhood dissolved in service to the state. Army soldier Lei Feng became an icon in this campaign. Enthusiastic voluntarism became the new ideal for citizens’ relationship to the state. Always ready to help those in need without thinking of himself, he treated the people as his family members, and considered the motherland as his own parents, saying: “It is the people and the government who have given me a second life. I will put my limited life into the unlimited service to the people.” In 1961, while at work, Lei Feng was killed in an accident. In his honor, the army published his voluminous diary. The nation was shocked by his life story, and deeply moved by his single-minded dedication and service to the people. His motto: “To live is to serve the people – live to make others happy” greatly inspired the Chinese people, especially the young generation. On March 5, 1962, Mao Zedong wrote an inscription and called on the entire nation to “Learn from Comrade Lei Feng.” Liu Shaoqi, President of China, also wrote an inscription: “Learn from Lei Feng, his ordinary but great spirit of serving the people.” Since that day, a nationwide drive of Learning from Lei Feng started all over the country. This political and spiritual movement greatly helped the Chinese government and the people to tide over their economic difficulties in the 1960s. (Wei 2005)

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Obligation in DMS7. The DMS7, in contrast, moved with deliberation in introducing changes that have cumulatively transformed the economy into one of the most globally dynamic, distancing itself from the preceding MCS6 each step of the way. The party still controls the government and all the instruments of coercion to the exclusion of all but the faintest shadow of democracy. But economics (the “bird in the cage” metaphor) has permitted an unfettered and often corrupt model of economic self-interest, with benefits to the state treasury and national economic growth in general. Serving the state while enriching oneself and family, now regaining some of its traditional visibility, has become the fuel of China’s prosperity. Guarantees against a return to MCS6 have been written into the constitution, and capitalists can now join the party. A new nationalism has emerged that opposes Japan and rivals the United States. The irredentum of Taiwan is also a driving force uniting China that has replaced the old slogans of class struggle.

Claimed sovereignty in DMS7 As a result of timely reforms that were vital in salvaging the Communist state in China, party dictatorship has survived and a growing portion of the population has prospered, in contrast to the half-hearted and too-late reforms in Gorbachev’s Soviet Union. China’s external relations have normalized with most countries,

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and China has joined many international organizations – partly to demonstrate its acceptance of global order, and also to keep Taiwan from gaining membership. The changes under the reforms have been sufficient to conclude that a new meta-constitution has emerged in China. Compared to SCS5 and MCS6, DMS7 has these characteristics: ● ● ● ●

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pragmatism in place of Marxist-Leninist dogma and Maoist doctrine; economic guidance rather than command from the state; use of international trade and investment to fuel economic growth; greater openness in foreign relations, in place of a posture of multiple threats and alliance with the Soviet Union and its clients; a growing place for rule of law in place of arbitrary officialdom and strict party dictatorship; and cultural receptivity to foreign science, ideas, and travel.

Officially, DMS7 continues to insist on Marxism-Leninism-Maoist Thought as the basis of its meta-constitutional values [Av], stressing [Vo] and to a lesser extent [Ve] while permitting greater latitude in economic (and a limited increment of political) liberty [Vl]. Nationalist themes are a frequent appeal to insure that economic self-interest does not undermine [Op]. In 2005, anti-Japanese demonstrations erupted in Chinese cities, and were echoed in Chinese communities abroad – hinting at Beijing’s ability to orchestrate overseas Chinese whose affections and interests have not yet synchronized with their countries of residence.

Conclusions: meta-constitutions and the claims of sovereignty China’s eight meta-constitutions have both linear and dialectic relationships. The Western MSNS can trace its lineage to the Greek polis, Roman legal traditions, and Judeo-Christian views of history and humanity. One could probably identify an equal number of meta-constitutions in Euro-America, although their occurrence would be more evenly spaced over time than the proliferation that China experienced in the twentieth century. The Middle Ages forged the philosophical and political foundations for the separation of church and state, while the Renaissance and Enlightenment established the state as rational and secular political entity. Revolutions, Industrial Revolution, and maritime expansion made the European state universal, while two World Wars transformed it into the lethal state, and the Russian Revolution created the modern totalitarian state. Transformation of the Chinese state has taken a different course. While strongly affected by the Western MSNS since the mid-nineteenth century, its dynamics have been peculiar to China. Of the eight meta-constitutions, four can be considered “normal” or stabilizing, in the sense that they provided long-term continuity and human security to their citizenry. The long-lived ICS2 rivaled the Egyptian dynasties in history but ruled far greater territories and peoples. The GRS4 had major problems of timing, design, and implementation, and has been in large part the victim of historical circumstances. Its rule on the mainland was

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disrupted by continued warlordism, Japanese invasion, and Communist uprising, but its largely beneficent government on Taiwan has demonstrated essential viability and commitment to democratic institutions. When the Communists established their SCS5variant of the Soviet system on the mainland, prospects for long-term improvement of human security had seemed bright in contrast to the preceding chaos. The Sino-Soviet alliance would provide defence, and the combination of a command economy and forced industrialization would propel the country into modernity. The hostility of United States to Communism heightened national solidarity in China, but also isolated Chinese economic and political influence abroad. Deng Xiaoping’s reforms were intended as a reprise of post-GLF retrenchment, and a resumption of SCS5. But during the turmoil of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore had linked their fortunes to the United States, and pursued high-growth economic policies based on export markets. The Soviets, in contrast, became mired in a stagnant economy. The SCS5 lost its lustre, and the Dengist reforms morphed it into the DMS7, which remains a market-friendly political dictatorship. A second group of meta-constitutions was short-lived, but revolutionary in transforming the state from one form to another. Their immediate effect was massive decrease of human security, but they also were bridges from one metaconstitution to another. ●

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The QLS1 – the Qin state brought an end to the period of Warring States, and unified the Chinese empire under Legalist philosophy. It built an infrastructure linking the far-flung territories to the central government, but at huge human cost, collapsing in 206 BC. Sima Qian’s Shiji (Historical Records) (Watson, B. 1971) and subsequent Confucian historians used the Qin as a negative example of unbridled monarchical hegemony, with few redeeming virtues. The RNS3 began with the 1911 downfall of the Qing, and ended with the capture of Beijing by the Nationalists in 1928. It also provided a negative model of the Chinese state. It was dominated by the bourgeoisie, subservient to warlord factions, and attempted to copy the Western parliamentary government into the Chinese environment. The Chinese people were unprepared for democracy, and the foreign powers exercised a semi-colonial stranglehold on key cities and areas. It was a period resembling interim dynastic China, complete with foreign predation – made worse by the superiority of foreign military technology, and the bankruptcy of Confucian and dynastic mystique. To the extent that the RNS3 was a meta-constitution, it had vague resemblance to confederal federalism, with nominal loyalty to the nationstate, but power devolved to provinces. The MCS6 enjoyed currency starting from the Hundred Flowers, through the GLF, to the end of the Cultural Revolution. Mao’s minions fomented class struggle – ersatz and real – with the ostensible purpose of avoiding stagnation and the return of capitalist rule, causing universities to close, government agencies to halt operations, schools to teach Maoist pseudo-knowledge, and

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the military to be politicized into an arm of activism. The ancient Legalist Shang Yang would have approved of Mao’s militia program: The militia movement facilitated the “militarization of labour” within the communes and thus assisted cadres in arousing patriotic fervour and mobilizing peasant for even greater efforts during the high tide of the leap. Within a month, tens of millions of Chinese had officially become militia members. There were 30 million in Szechwan alone. (MacFarquhar 1983: 101) The results were economic stagnation, a terrorized population, and alienation from international Communism. While the CCP has not condemned Mao as Nikita Khrushchev criticized Stalin, it has distanced itself from his doctrines implicitly by pursuing markedly un-Marxist policies in economic and social development, though much of the Soviet-style security apparatus remains in force. In the past decade, developments in Taiwanese democracy have raised the model of a new state-form, based on the TIS8. Taiwanese independence advocates who are creating a separate Taiwan identity claim there is a Taiwanese nation, separate from mainland China. Taiwanese society is multicultural – consisting of Hakka, Fujianese descendants, aborigines, and mainlanders. Its advanced capitalist economy, multiparty democracy, and religious freedom demarcate it from the weak private property, Communist dictatorship on the mainland. Independence advocates could be strengthened by the emergence of other breakaway regions and provinces in China. But even a Chinese commonwealth or confederal system would be considered a step backward by Beijing. Although China grudgingly tolerates Taiwanese autonomy, it promises to use force should Taiwan or any other province seek full independence. The first requirement for the sovereign state is security and order. In the case of historical China, unification of territory has been the prerequisite to sovereign order. Only in twentieth-century China has the value of citizen liberty [Vl] become an element in [Sc] of the state: ●

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The RNS3 promised liberty [Vl] through elections and representative dem ocracy, but lacked order and unity [Sa]. The SCS5 denied individual liberty for the sake of order and progress in industrialization, while promising economic and collective liberty in the future. The MCS6 claimed to liberate the masses from established authority of party, state, and family, at the expense of order and for the sake of revolutionary equality [Ve]. The TIS8 promises liberty in preventing absorption by an unfree PRC, and building on the political institutions established by GRS4. After existing as a province-level microcosm of GRS4 for fifty-five years, the emerging TIS8 anticipates that it can continue a high level of order, liberty, and human security as MSNS. So far, after we discount for unfavorable historical circumstances,

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Separating actual sovereignty from human security in China Actualizing Communist sovereignty in China has involved a fundamental dilemma: Utopian visions and sophisticated designs of ideal society have historically produced more human suffering than occurs in evolved and organic societies. Revolutionaries often see old members of society as obstacles to be eliminated if their new vision is to be implemented – “breaking some eggs to make an omelette.” The Maoists killed millions in the land reforms, and tens of millions perished in the GLF and Cultural Revolution. Red Terror cleansed China of many opponents, and the 1989 Tiananmen massacre renewed the regime’s resolution to physically destroy dissidents. For three decades the CCP terrorized and excited the mainland population to obey its will. The CCP has been the central instrument for implementing state sovereignty within China, and the PLA for guarding borders and territory. Territorial concessions of the past were part of the Western imperialist narrative, yet under the reforms, China has opened new Special Economic Zones (SEZ) to provide a conducive environment for foreign investment that is capitalism-friendly. Mao followed the dictum of Sunzi and made preparation for war the overriding consideration of the state: “War is a matter of vital importance to the state; the province of life and death: the road to survival or ruin. It is mandatory that it be thoroughly studied.” One result was the PLA became a major prop of his statebuilding project. He gave Lenin’s “war Communism” a Chinese flavor. For Mao, war was a climactic, decisive act to shatter the present and shape the future. The perils of indecisive and therefore protracted wars from which no country ever benefits, as advised in Sunzi Bingfa, were never quite understood in Indian strategic thought . . . Even in recent times Mao Zedong emphasised protracted war as the people’s means to defeat the stronger forces of a state. (Raghvan 1998) Sunzi Bingfa related power to military strength. This special emphasis on the military as the indicator of national power continues to weigh heavily in Chinese thought in modern times. Mao’s oft-quoted political power growing out of the barrel of the gun, reiterates that emphasis even more tellingly than Sunzi Bingfa, which places a high premium on decisive, even deterrent action. There is a clear preference for action directed toward decisive results. The story of Sunzi, beheading a favorite concubine of the King of Wu while teaching them drill, to show how obedience is to be obtained may be apocryphal, but is indicative of ruthless emphasis on decisive results.

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Resolving sovereignty Externally, Beijing fought skirmishes and wars to express determination to defend its territory. These included armed conflicts with the United States in Korea, the USSR on the Ussurii River, India in the Himalayas, and Vietnam on the Yunnan border. Mao and his successors are not Trotskyists, who gave up millions of acres of Russian lands at Brest-Litovsk to gain peace for the revolution – Chinese territory is inviolable and nonnegotiable. Now that Hong Kong and Macao have “returned to the Motherland,” Taiwan is the last remaining issue of the civil war, and is central to completing the People’s Republic territorial integrity. Sovereignty is also about people. With tens of millions of Chinese abroad, their loyalty and Beijing’s claims over them have been issues of sovereignty. The term “Overseas Chinese” (huaqiao) refers to Han Chinese and their descendants who emigrated from China. Kinship of race, clan, ancestral homes, and culture has been a strong link between them and their homeland, often at odds with their position and status abroad. Chinese territorial claims have been based on imperial extent – even down to the South China Sea reefs and islands. Disputes continue with Russia and Japan over previous ICS2 territories. These claims [Sc], inherited from past empires, juxtapose with actual jurisdiction [Sa] and identify points of conflict that can erupt into confrontations.

Taiwan – the other China Finally, the GRS4 on Taiwan has been undergoing transformation and is facing a new challenge to its own principles. With democratization in the 1980s, the GRS4 legalized non-Guomindang political parties – a radical departure from its insistence on the single-party dictatorship which had been the hallmark of the state under siege. The majority of the population was Taiwan-born, and many resented mainlander influx and domination. The most important party to oppose the Guomindang was the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which attracted many native Taiwanese, and won control of the presidency in 2000 with the election of Chen Shui-bian, ending over half a century of KMT rule. Taiwanese identity and separateness have increasingly influenced policy, as the desire to merge with the mainland dissipated. Even before the DPP came to power, several signs indicated that the island of Taiwan was taking on the character of a sovereign state. Diplomatically, twenty-six nations4 recognize Taiwan as the Republic of China. It has its own armed forces, and it has the loyalty of its citizens. Although there is considerable sentiment to declare an independent state, the practical difficulties are immense, and reaction from the PRC would stillborn such an attempt. We have postulated the envisioned independent state as the “Taiwan Independent State” (TIS8), and its possibility has evoked opposition from both the mainland DMS7 and the GRS4 on Taiwan. Both existent states see the TIS8 as a regressive first step leading back to the RNS3 of 1911–27, when provinces preempted central authority, issued their own money, and maintained their own armies. Tibet, Inner

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Mongolia, and Xinjiang have sizable ethnic minorities who may privately regard themselves as colonies of the Han majority. Recognition of a secessionist Taiwan would be a retrograde precedent for the Chinese state so intent on completing its sovereign claims. A strong and prosperous Taiwan is a contemporary fact, but there has been growing dependence on mainland prosperity and resources to maintain that economic growth. A sovereign Taiwan, opposed by Beijing might not be attacked, but it would need regional support. So far the United States has backed unofficial Taiwanese autonomy, but would be less inclined to support Taiwan sovereignty claims, especially as it would be highly provocative to China. International pariahhood for Taiwan could be alleviated only if Japan were to display a willingness to risk China’s ire and forge strong links with its breakaway province. Taiwan is the last major unsettled issue of the Chinese civil war, and occupies a fundamental place in the development of the modern Chinese meta-constitution. The paradox of Taiwan has been that the more its democracy has matured and consolidated, the greater has been the political divergence from the PRC. Aside from recognizing the constant centrifugal forces of regionalism and provincialism in China, Taiwan demonstrates how democracy can erode national sovereignty as politicians seeking political office reflect the sentiments of voters. Taiwan is the cause and symbol of contemporary China’s incomplete sovereignty – it is the last remaining province of imperial China not to be incorporated into the post-1949 state. Its twenty-three million are Chinese citizens not subject to the Communist Party, and most have little desire to become so. The independence tendencies of Taiwan are seen by China as a backward move, and a threat to China’s unity, while the Guomindang formula of representing the Republic of China at least was an unthreatening stasis. A Republic of Taiwan, in contrast to the ROCOT, would stir belligerent moves by Beijing. Until the electoral victories of the DPP, the sovereignty issue had been stabilized under Deng as something to be solved by future generations. Now, however, the backsliding may lead to a constitutional crisis. Taiwan is pulled in two directions. One is the common Chinese identity. Although the Nationalists failed to achieve their goals on the mainland, their Sun Yat-sen derived vision has successfully created a modern protonation on Taiwan. The Guomindang has demonstrated that the second meta-constitution of the Republic offered a lower-cost entry to modernity – both in terms of human and resource costs. In summary, the past hundred years for China have been a time of pursuing actualized sovereignty of MSNS, and leaders have tried variations of its design, resulting in several meta-constitutions. Chinese sovereignty remains incomplete, and ironically, the most democratic and prosperous part of China might be the least likely to survive as an integral part of a completed China, where Westernstyle, multiparty democracy is perceived to contradict the achievement and maintenance of full sovereignty as a MSNS.

Notes

2 Dimensions of human security: foundations in individual human life 1 Use of masculine pronouns and “man” herein should be understood to refer to both genders when the subject is understood to be human or humans. 2 Kang notes a primary distinction between prisoners who are deemed capable of rehabilitation and the “irredeemables” who, along with their families, were to be exterminated (myulhada) (Kang 2001: 79). 3 One implication of this progression and amplification of human security from individual to person to citizen is that a MSNS can be constructed on the basis of fulfilling fundamental human needs, starting with prolonging life. A second implication is that development and construction of society and polity based on a Western-oriented foundation of autonomous individuality is that, while the general characteristics of a MSNS will fit a certain international standard, the details and spirit of the state will reflect the character and concept of individuals within the dominant culture. Japan, for example, is a thoroughly modern state in terms of international behavior and structure, but its informal institutions have major earmarks of its past feudal and Confucian culture, with consequent abnegation of Western-type radical individualism. 4 State and society have contributed to the secondary survival chances of the individual prior to the life-threat event. 5 As Moll Flanders describes mother and child: It is manifest to all that understand anything of children, that we are born into the world helpless, and incapable either to supply our own wants or so much as make them known; and that without help we must perish; and this help requires not only an assisting hand, whether of the mother or somebody else, but there are two things necessary in that assisting hand, that is, care and skill; without both which, half the children that are born would die, nay, thought they were not to be denied food; and one half more of those that remained would be cripples or fools, lose their limbs, and perhaps their sense. I question not but that these are partly the reasons why affection was placed by nature in the hearts of mothers to their children; without which they would never be able to give themselves up, as tis necessary they should, to the care and waking pains needful to the support of their children. (Defoe 1971: 182) 6 In a nineteenth-century shipwreck novel, Swiss Family Robinson survive as a family unit, and manage the new environment so successfully that they decide to remain and set up a colony on their island. The bourgeois, middle class family transplanted in the wilderness, overcomes difficulties far more efficiently than Crusoe, and repulses invaders through cooperation, pooled efforts and coordination. Collective efforts based on consanguinity seem to conquer all.

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7 In Dream of the Red Chamber, the Ancestress of the clan is anxious to arrange the marriage of her grandson, Pao Yu, so she can die peacefully that her responsibilities have been completed. 8

Women of breeding were sequestered in the home, except for special occasions such as visits to the temple. Even then, they traveled in covered sedan chairs. Once married, they were supposed to serve their mothers-in-law and help them run the household. After all, a wife was chosen not by her husband but by his parents. Only concubines were chosen by the husband. The precedence of the parents over the husband is reflected in the common Chinese expression that a family is ‘taking a daughter-in-law’ rather than a husband “taking a bride.” (Ching 1988: 40)

9 For consistency, abbreviations which appear in notational formulae of the theory of human security will be identified in the text by enclosure in square brackets [ ]. The subscript letter refers to “level of protection/existence.” When referring to the levels of existence, individual, person, and citizen are identified by italics. 10 Adventure stories focus on crises, and not the full life history of individuals. Crusoe provides some biographical material, and we are safe to assume that the existence of the other protagonists was due to contribution of parents, not only physically reproducing, but also providing nurturing for them as infants and adolescents. Their survival to adulthood was certainly due to the protection given them from birth to a time when they could care for themselves. Family [F] is offstage, but indispensable. 11 For a plausible and fictional reconstruction of individual and personal human security in pre-historic times, see the series of novels by Jean Auel, Clan of the Cave Bear (1980), and so on. 12 After describing his experiences as an inmate of Auschwitz, Frankl wrote that the traditions which buttressed man’s behavior in the past are now rapidly diminishing. No instinct tells him what he has to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people wish him to do (totalitarianism). (Frankl 1984: 128) 13 The prisoner is naked before the power of the state. In a confrontation with a warder in his prison, Jean Pasqualini protests his innocence while the agent of the state declares: “The government never speaks needlessly. It always knows what offenses you have committed” (Bao 1973: 282). 3 The modern sovereign nation-state (MSNS) 1 Extreme nationalism may fuse the private with the public, with terrifying results. Baines suggests that “Hutu extremism was inscribed so violently on the bodies of an imagined enemy in order to fuse an ‘imagined’ Hutu nation in the minds of an otherwise regionally and class-divided Hutu populace” (Baines 2003: 2). 2 According to the World Health Organization, there were a reported 56.5 million deaths in 2001 (WHO 2006). 3 “. . . because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” 4 The risk that one party to a contract can change their behavior to the detriment of the other party once the contract has been concluded. 5 An example is the US Supreme Court decision (June 23, 2005) on Kelo versus. New London, which ruled that local governments may seize people’s homes and businesses – even against their will – for private economic development.

Notes

175

6 Nitroglycerin [C3H5(ONO2)3] is the principle explosive ingredient in dynamite. It is three times as powerful as an equal amount of gunpowder, is smokeless, and its explosive wave travels 25 times faster (Pafko 2000). 7 Chalmers Johnson (2004) argues that in the United States, the military-industrial complex has superseded constitutional limitations and is becoming immune to democratic checks. 8 William C. Kirby (2005: 111) has noted the Communist plagiarization of Soviet institutions, but except for Maoist creativity, various Chinese leaders throughout the twentieth century did not hesitate to look abroad for institutional inspiration. 9 “For the savage people in many places of America, except the government of small families, the concord whereof dependeth on natural lust, have no government at all, and live at this day in that brutish manner, as I said before” (Hobbes 1651: 92). 10

Since the introduction of the reform and opening-up policy, to adapt to changes in the mode of social production and the style of life, traditional families of complicated structure and big size have been gradually transformed into families of simple structure and small size. (People’s Daily 2005)

11 John Lott (2000) argues that the legal presence of guns in homes is a strong disincentive to break-ins and other crimes. 4 Prologue to a theory of human security 1 Specifically, unfettered liberty would allow the advantaged, the strong, and the clever to amass power and wealth at the expense of the poor, the weak and the less clever. Strict equality would require confiscation of “excess wealth,” limitations and quotas in education and government positions, and an array of multiple government interventions not only to keep the playing field level, but to assure that games always end in ties – a moral hazard with obvious disincentives for persons to excel. 2 “The dissolution of marriage breaks the family into successively smaller units that are less able to sustain themselves without state assistance” (Morse 2005). 3 Statistically, the number of individuals killed in war has been steadily dropping in the past 15 years (Easterbrook 2005). 4 Pro-abortionists prefer to characterize the fetus as a type of living tissue without personhood having legal status and rights. Anti-abortionists counter that when a majority of expectant mothers view sonograms of their fetus, they see “it” more as a child waiting to be born, and decide against abortion, based on perceived personhood. 5 A trend in the MSNS has been toleration of multiple citizenships of persons, though this may exacerbate the dilemma of plural loyalties. 6 The medieval Crusades are often cited as an example par excellence of religious fury and destruction against innocent populations. In actual fact, the Crusades were an attempt to retake lands and populations conquered by Islam in its initial expansion several centuries before (Madden 1999). 5 A notational theory of human security 1 Religion can modify the universal instinct for life. Jihadist suicides have become a tactic of terrorists in the Middle East, for example. Catholicism also celebrates martyrdom, but not when it harms and kills innocent bystanders. Its doctrine upholds the sacredness of life, even to what many consider extremes of forbidding contraception, abortion, and any form of euthanasia or assisted suicide. 2 Average is indicated by underlining here.

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3 A Marxist would argue that the capitalist state in fact bestows far greater security on the capitalists, at the expense of the proletariat. Communist states have thus actively deprived class enemies of full citizenship as retribution for the alleged inequality of the old order. 4 While the French Revolution enshrined Liberty as a supreme national value, the Reign of Terror, Thermidor Reaction, and Napoleonic Empire made a travesty of high ideals. 5 In the controversy over gun control, the central issue is self-protection versus those who believe all weapons are a threat to well-being. 6 Actualizing imperial sovereignty in ancient China 1 On the periodic interaction of Central Asian peoples with China (see Mair 2005). 2 Pragmatically and universally, we may hypothesize that government based on a degree of actual and apparent equality has a better chance of surviving, and the state that allocates human security evenly, approaching average per citizen (Sa, Formula Four), will better maintain long term Order [Vo]. 3 This was completed around the time of Constantine’s Edict of Milan (313), which granted positive advantages and privileges to the Christian community, including exclusion of Church lands from taxation, elevation of the clergy, and state support for building of churches. 4 From end of Han to start of Sui, number of prefectures increased by a factor of twentytwo and the number of commanderies by six (Wright 1978: 99). 5 The north–south divide was not only cultural and ethnic, but also geological. A broad central mountain range, not as high as those in the west, separated the northern plains from the southern valleys, and southern mountains created even more pockets that could be resistant to centralizing dynasties. 6 Henry IV of Germany famously begged papal forgiveness at Canossa. The pope relented and revoked the king’s excommunication in 1076, accepting his humiliation and agreeing to work for Henry’s reconciliation with the other German princes. Catholic Encyclopedia. 7 “And if the Sui founder did not think of restoring the ecumenical empire, the historians in his entourage were there to urge the example of Han upon him.” Rituals and signs indicated that the new dynasty had Heaven’s mandate to rule, that it was taking the steps necessary to bring the new political order into consonance with cosmic forces and with the needs of the people. For the Sui founder and his advisors, the Chinese past was almost palpable, an ever-present thing which influenced all decisions, attitudes, and behavior. (Wright 1978: 14) 8 The affair was the subject of Bai Juyi’s “Song of Unending Sorrow” ( Hen Ge):

Chang

The Emperor’s eyes could never gaze on her enoughTill war-drums, booming from Yuyang, shocked the whole earth. (Translated by Witter Bynner) 9 The Yuan reestablished the civil service examinations in 1315, but favored nonChinese (Hucker 1978: 6). 7 Claiming dynastic sovereignty under the imperial meta-constitution 1 Han Feizi, chapter 50, quoted in (Fu 1996: 53). 2 Yu Zo answered, “If the people have plenty, their prince will not be left to want alone. If the people are in want, their prince cannot enjoy plenty alone” (Confucius 1975: 286).

Notes

177

3 In his study of two books on family life from 590 and 1190, Bol notes how the earlier author stresses cultural and classical erudition and learning, while the later addresses direct questions of behaving ethically. He writes: “In this period (Song) intellectuals increasingly forsook the literary-historical perspective of the past for an ethical-philosophical perspective” (Bol 1992: 12). 4 Aristotle described individuals within the family having differing roles and abilities, and the family as training ground for citizenship. Politics, Book One, Part XIII. http://classics.mit.edu/ Aristotle/politics.1.one.html 5 ren, translated as benevolence: the ideograph graphically consists of the elements for “man” and the number “two.” 8 Sovereignty and state-building in late Qing and Republican China 1 Reinforced by equally predatory colony-seeking behavior of the European MSNS. 2 Sorge supplied Soviets with information about Anti-Comintern Pact, the German–Japanese Pact and warning of Pearl Harbor attack. In 1941 Sorge informed Stalin of Hitler’s intentions to launch Operation Barbarossa. Moscow answered with thanks but little was done. Before the battle for Moscow, Sorge transmitted information that Japan was not going to attack Soviet Union in the East. This information allowed Zhukov to redeploy Siberian troops for the defence of Moscow. Japanese secret service had already intercepted many of his messages and begun to close in. Sorge was arrested in Tokyo, incarcerated in Sugamo Prison and hanged on October 9, 1944. The Soviet Union did not acknowledge Sorge until 1964. http://www.fact-index.com/r/ri/ richard_sorge.html (see also Johnson 1990). 3 Thus named because certain rights and privileges were accorded to foreign powers in China, while no such reciprocity was given to China in those treaty partners. 4 The Song lost their war in part because corrupt officials convinced the emperor to recall and execute the most capable general, Yue Fei who had been on the verge of winning against the Jin. 5 Jiang’s rise was due to his “skilful manipulation of political events and his neutralist positions in the severe left–right struggle that had developed in the party” (Tien 1972: 12). 6 A 40 year increase of 29%. 9 Contemporary China’s incomplete sovereignty: fusion, succession, and adaptation 1 Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party, February 25, 1956. 2 Except in the realm of political reform, where any move toward democracy is repressed, as evidenced by the Tiananmen massacres in 1989. 3 So obviously contradictory that the juxtaposition of the two terms is almost oxymoronic. Yet it captures the flavor of Mao’s ideology and parallels other outrageous political formulations, including “democratic centralism.” 4 As of early 2005.

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Index

Alexander the Great 87 altruism 4, 29, 63 Anarchy Man 23 Anderson, William 126 aristocracy, decline 99 Aristotle, on constitutions 109 ascription 88 Authoritarian Man 22 Bai Gang 119 Bai Zhongxi 141 baihua 139 Banfield, Edward 59 bank, as metaphor of the state 70 baojia system 96 Becker, Jasper 63, 163 Bedeski, Robert E. 141, 142, 157 Behe, Michael J. 6 Bill of Rights, American 51 Boaz, David 74 Bodin, Jean 31 Bolshevik revolution 49 Booysen, Frikkie 42 Boxer rebellion 134 Boyle, John H. 145 Buddhism 85, 91 Byzantine Empire 86 Cao Cao 94 Chang Hao 127 Chang Jung 18, 142 Chang Yu-chuan 126 Charlemagne 91 Chen dynasty 89 Chen Shui-bian 171 China, social organization, human security role 138 Chinese state and human security 37 Chrimes, S.B. 111

cinema 14; Cast Away 15; The Edge 14, 21; The Gods Must Be Crazy 16; Touching the Void 5 citizenship 112; Aristotle on 123; Confucian notion 123; Republic 140 Civil War, American 51 class, in Communist societies 73 collectivization 157 Confucianism 121; claimed sovereignty 120; education 19; emphasis on family 40; ethics 122; examinations 125; human security 121; meta-constitution 40; state 99, 105 consanguineity 45 conservatism 52 constitution: claims 116; ideology 110; security 110; state 33; written 108 corvée 98 crime rates 73 Cultural Revolution 20 culture 11 Daoism 17, 121 Darwin, Charles 6 death 63 Declaration of Independence, American 51 Defoe, Daniel 12 Democratic Man 22 depression, impact on Guomindang China 143 division of labor 45 Donne, John 29 Dower, John W. 132 Dream of the Red Chamber 12, 103 Durkheim, Emile 125 dynastic cycle 20, 93 dynastic founders 116

188

Index

Eastman, Lloyd E. 141 economy 66 egalitarianism 71 egoistic particularism 37 Elysium 60 environment, natural 64 equality, state value 48 eremitism 123 European Union 3, 60, 130 external relations 69 family 19; alternative civil society in China 152; cult of 83; primary security structure 45 family and state 37; Communism 41; Cultural Revolution 162; traditional China 39 famines 26 Feng Guifen 136 filial piety 34, 120 foreign concessions 145 Formula: One 65; Two 67; Three 69; Four 70; Five 71 Fourteenth Amendment, US constitution 58 Fu Zhengyuan 106 Gairdner, William D. 40 Garrison, Jim 46 genocide 25–26 gentry 89 globizen 2, 24, 59, 60 Golden Rule 34 Goncharov, Sergei 158 Gong, Gerrit W. 35 Great Leap Forward 20, 160 Grotius, Hugo 27 Guillermaz, Jacques 157 gulag 8 gun control 42 guo (state) 19; guojia 40 Guomindang, anti-Communist campaigns 147; geopolitical strategy 148; modelled after Communist Party 150; reorganization 137; state 53 habeas corpus, Lincoln suspension 52 Hale, Nathan 4 Halhin Gol, battle 143 Han dynasty 82 Han Feizi 80 Han Gaozu 84 Han government and Confucianism 83 Himmelfarb, Gertrude 47, 57

Hobbes, Thomas 2, 34, 37, 40, 44, 60, 71, 103 Hong Xiuquan 104, 137 Hösle, Vittorio 27 Hsu, Leonard S. 130 Hu Hanmin 142, 150 Huang Chao rebellion 93 Hucker, Charles O. 77, 79, 93–97, 108, 145 human life cycle 21 human security 2; definitions 4, 29, 55; failure (HSF) 56; framework of analysis 45; individual responsibility 10, 22; life struggle 8; role of states 24; and state 22; theory, central components 53 Hundred Days Reform 132 Hundred Flowers campaign 158 Huntington, Samuel P. 91 ideology 64 incomplete state, China 155 individual, as organism 57; in extremis 9; human security of 62; survival 21; unit of human security 45; will to live 9 Japan, expansion in 1930s 143; modernization 148 Jefferson, Thomas 48 Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) 140, 142 Jiang Jingguo 151 Jobs, Steve 4 justice, as political value 72 Kang Chol-Hwan 8 Kennedy, Paul 46 knowledge, accumulation in China 101; Confucian 122; Qing 137; security component 46 Koguryo 90, 104 Korea, kings 129 Krasner, Stephen D. 68 Kuhn, Philip A. 127, 136 Lady Qiaoguo 89 League of Nations 144 Lecky, William E.H. 44 Legalism 74, 80 Lei Feng 166 Lenin, Vladimir 50 Leviathan, universal fear of death 63 Li Si 80 Li Zehou 159 Liang, Heng 163

Index 189 Liang Qichao 127 libertarianism 42 liberty, post-imperial China 139; state value 51 Lieberthal, Kenneth 162 likin 149 Lin Biao 159 Liu Shaoqi 166 Liu Xiang 81 Liu Zaifu 120 Locke, John 117 longevity 30 loyalty 20 Lysenkoism 163 Macartney mission 112 MacFarquhar, Roderick 58, 169 Maddison, Angus 138 Maine, Sir Henry 24 Mamet, David 14 Man versus nature, in literature 17 Manchuria 45 Mandate of Heaven 113, 117 Mao Zedong 155 marriage 19 Martel, Charles 91 Maruyama Masao 129 Marxism-Leninism-Maoist Thought 167 Maslow, Abraham 47 May Fourth Movement 134 Medieval Church, liberating agency against feudalism 39 Meiji constitution 109 Mencius 117, 124 Meng Tian 79 meritocracy 88; Han dynasty 83 meta-constitution 3, 33, 75, 113, 167; China 52; competing 156; Han dynasty 91; revolutionary 168; sovereignty 109 military, primary security structure of state 45 Miller, David 130 Milosz, Czeslaw 1 Misra, Kalpana 159 Modern Sovereign Nation-State (MSNS), characteristics 31; decline 55; growth to empire 135; lethality 3 Mohism 59 Moll Flanders 13 Mongol rule 95 Moody, Peter R. 150, 158 moral hazard 30 Mozi 107 Munro, Donald J. 118

Nathan, Andrew J. 161 national liberation 73 national security 35 nationalism 25, 39, 146 Natural Man 22 Nazism 50 Nobel, Alfred 32 Northern Expedition 141 Oakeshott, Michael 63; on knowledge 64 obligation 66 Oi, Jean 160 Open Door 133 Opium Wars 112 order, state value 48, 52 O’Rourke, P.J. 4 Orwell, George 50 Ottoman Empire 144 Overseas Chinese 171 Parish, William L. 162 Patriotism 59 peasantry 105 personhood 6, 10, 16, 29, 63 persons, human security 65 Plato 48 Polanyi, Michael 74 Political economy 69 political friction, coefficient 51, 68 political values 72 Popper, Karl 130 Prisoner Man 23 prisoners 8; totalitarian state 11 property, confiscation 30 Protagoras 44 Protestant Reformation 92 pseudo-knowledge 64 Qin state 1, 77, 81, 101, 107, 118 Raghvan, V.R. 170 raison d’etat 47 Ralston, Aron 9 religion 60, 91 Republic, China, challenges and adaptation 144; minimalism 138 Revolt of Seven Princes (154 BC) 82, 108 Robinson Crusoe 13, 21 Roh Tae-Woo 129 Roman Empire 83, 84 Romance of Three Kingdoms 85 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 165 Rubin, Vitaly A. 106–7

190

Index

St. Augustine 86 St. Paul 58 samurai 129, 132 Sartre, Jean-Paul 6 scholar-officials, Confucian 126 Scruton, Roger 55, 59 secularists 60 Security workers 70 self-knowledge 64 sexual bonding 15 Shang Yang 78, 106 Shirk, Susan L. 160 Shuihuzhuan (All Men Are Brothers) 18 Sienkiewicz, Henryk 62 Sima Qian 168 Smith, Adam 125 Social existence 57 Social Friction, Coefficient of 66 social justice 29 social knowledge 66 Son of Heaven 124 Sorge, Richard 143 soul 25 sovereignty 31; actualized 67, 54; claimed 3, 33, 54; concept, US and Europe 131; modern state 48 Soviet state 116 Special Economic Zones (SEZ) 170 Spence, Jonathan D. 97, 98, 139 Spring and Autumn Period (770–475 BC) 78 Stalin, Josef 24, 50 state, claims on citizens 75; Communist 50; lethality 25, 27; life-cycle 28; paradoxes 27; territorial expansion 46 state-building, Communist 53; eclecticism 137 statecraft, as political knowledge 115 Sui dynasty 86; conquests 90; reforms 88 Sui Yangdi 88 Sun Yat-sen 53, 130, 153; social Darwinism 154; three-stage plan for state-building 153 Sunzi 170; Art of War 81 survival, biological 57 Taiping Rebellion 104, 132 Taiwan 35, 68; China problem 131; as irredentum 32, 166; post-1949 144; sovereignty 172; transformation 171

Tang dynasty 93 Teggart, F.J. 5, 36 Thurston, Anne F. 162 Tien, Hung-mao 150 Tokugawa Shogunate 132 Tongmenghui 133 totalitarianism 161 Tsao Hsueh-chin 103 tsunami 4 Twenty-One Demands 133 Twitchett, Denis 78, 80 UN Charter 59 UNDP, concept of human security 42 uneven development 156 values, political 34 Van Slyke, Lyman P. 145 Wang Jingwei 142, 150 Wang Mang 75, 83, 84, 107 Wang Yangming 125 warlordism 94 Washington, George 155 Wei An 166 Wei Yuan 136 Weigel, George 113 welfare state 42 Westphalian state 112 White Lotus Rebellion 132 Wilbur, C. Martin 140 Wild Swans 18 will to live 20 Wilson, James Q. 49 Women, nomadic 87 Wright, Arthur F. 87–89, 92, 94 Wu Zetian 93 Xiang Yu 84 Yan Xishan 141 Yang Guang 90 Yixian 19 Yuan Shikai 133 Zeng Xiaohua 127 Zhan Guo Ce 81 Zhang Zuolin 141 Zheng Shiping 158 Zhou state 78 Zhu Yuanzhang 95