Victor Lieberman in Strange Parallels: Volume 1, Integration on the Mainland: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c.800–1830 that one reason the “Indian model” of statecraft and culture was more favored to the “Chinese model” is that the former is far less intense and easier to execute than the latter. We now know that a substantial number of Indians actually migrated to Southeast Asia in the 1st millennium, but that’s not sufficient to explain everything. The Thai arrived in Southeast Asia as Mahayana Buddhists but everywhere shifted to Theravada (the Shan in Burma are Tai).
Lieberman’s thesis is that the full package of Confucian statecraft requires a large literate bureaucratic class. Vietnam after 1500 shifted in large part to this model, but it was the exception, not the rule. And Vietnam is the mainland Southeast Asian state that looks much more to China than India in its high culture. The reason the Chinese model was hard, and really only Korea pulled it off (Vietnam and Japan executed parts of it), is that it requires a level of cultural conformity and investment in education for the elites that is a massive opportunity cost in time. It’s a lot easier to just express loyalty to the semi-divine king rather than study classical texts in the hopes of achieving high office.
But, I just realized that the modern world is much more amenable to the Confucian model! Mass literacy is already common, and the bureaucratic state is the rule, not the exception.
And now, more than ever, we need virtue in our elites. The rational “eat what you can kill” model of modern elite culture in the West is producing a group of individuals who are feeding off the massive carrion of their dying societies.
Hopefully without sounding dismissive and arrogant, does this actually work for SE Asia though? In the sense of (if I’m getting this right, and I may not be) Indic model being appealing *because* literacy rates comparatively low (compared to China).
I thought Theravada Buddhist literacy rates were pretty high. (Random, perhaps exaggerated link – https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/233616131.pdf – ” To judge from epigraphic records, the production of written texts in medieval Burma was extremely costly, for it demanded a great quantity of human labor. The profession of scribe was well known and well appreciated. Monasteries were usually endowed with scribes who would care for the replenishment of the library. The writing tradition was not static. It gained in strength over the centuries.” But “And at the time of British annexation, literacy rates in Burma were higher than in England – without any intervention of the printing press.”. Though there may be some exaggeration here!).
Like, is having this whole huge monastic class that’s literate in the languages of the Buddhist scriptures really “cheaper” at the societal level than a Confucian scholar class?
It seems a bit more likely to me, just at a totally ignorant glance, that SE Asia got “locked into” an Indic model long before the full “scholar-bureaucrat” model had developed in China, and then its cultural imagination continued on the same path.
After all, the whole model of exams -> power only really takes shape in China properly by the Tang-Song transition, right? That’s quite a bit after there even *were* the first Indic kingdoms?
Along with the fact that someone actually has to *eliminate* the existing aristocracy, after all.
I find it hard to get a read on why the Chinese aristocracy declined… Like, I don’t think it was because people decided that only scholar-officials should govern and then an aristocracy conformed to that. (Obviously not what you’re implying, but I’ve seen people who seem to have this impression. )
It seems more like for whatever reason the Emperor was powerful enough to at key stages of Chinese history to simply eliminate any vestiges of military-aristocracy, also crushed any independent religious authority (no troublesome samurai clans, no Buddhist sangha or sohei!), and then needed bureaucrats to administer the Empire, who then ended up being drawn and populating the class of landlords and forming the ruling class somewhat by default. In Japan and many other places, the Emperors and kings simply didn’t have such power…? The Chinese aristocracy didn’t give up their power out of a sense of rightness of a life of Confucian study and that power should really lie with them, they were eliminated?
Medieval and early modern Japanese, and their elites, seem to have had no less commitment to literacy and learning than their Chinese counterparts… (More, if anything!). But it seems like there was just simply not the central power to marginalize and eliminate the samurai-clans, or the Buddhist priesthood, and so really no Confucian scholar-gentry class.
(Wrote and excised some specific rather negative comments about the actual value of pursuing a Confucian system!).
Yes, modern structural conditions resemble the ones Confusionism evolved under. That’s why British civil servants are called Mandarins.
Maybe this means the West evolves to be like China, or that China outcompetes the West. Or not. But what do any of outcomes have to do with virtuous elites?
What is the “eat what you can kill model”, what evidence do you have that it describes the modern western elite. Has China or any other civilisation ever had an elite that was objectively any more virtuous? The answer might be “yes” but some sort of evidence would be nice.
“a group of individuals who are feeding off the massive carrion of their dying societies.”
Amen, brother!
The question is what virtue? We had Christianity (I’m not), but that’s gone being replaced with a modern iteration of Marxism.
What is the “eat what you can kill model”, what evidence do you have that it describes the modern western elite. Has China or any other civilisation ever had an elite that was objectively any more virtuous? The answer might be “yes” but some sort of evidence would be nice.
the British elite had higher mortality rate in WW I than the common people. that’s because officer mortality rates were higher. they put their lives on the line.
the American elite wasn’t as extreme in WW II, but ppl like George hw bush and jfk’s brother did risk their lives. no way they would now (romney’s sons made a bigger difference as business and management guys 😉
as for china, officials did irrational things. emperors with military backgrounds (e.g., founder of song) demobilized the army and turned everything civilian. they had an ethos. honored in the breach…
Matt,
A Chinese aristocratic system beyond the imperial family disappears after the Tang. At the founding of Tang, noble families claiming survival from Han times had their own armed retinues, military service was a high calling, and imperial guard status was competitive.
Northeastern nobility was haughty enough to even dispute the Emperor’s seniority, and resented the slaying of their champion in the wars during the founding. Something which would bear trouble for centuries down the line.
The five dynasties and ten kingdoms period between the Tang and the Song was a very violent time, with regular mutinies, endless mobilizations, and ferocious military officers dominating courts; that and the disorder before then with capital burnt and the breakdown of government after the Huang Chao rebellion helped do away with the old ways.
Of note Huang Chao apparently relished massacring the officials and scions of noble families in the capital, resentment at being locked out of the system. The imperial examinations did not staff the majority of governmental positions until the Song
Since the An Lushan turmoil the imperial government had de facto accepted a kind of Warring States existence with several of the military governors in the north. In perhaps a parallel development, imperial authority in Japan sharply declined at around the same time; this could hardly be helped by the example of the independent lords in China *
I wouldn’t be surprised if the Japanese took their cue from this to abandon imperial authority, although it is, or became, a peculiarity to the Japanese temperament (see their military in WW2, the simultaneous reverence of the Emperor and disobedience of senior directives), and of course the Japanese are very different from the Chinese
* Japan of that time was significantly influenced by Tang China, in fact some Tang era artifacts and art are difficult to find except in Japan
Btw, the military emperors of period between the Tang and the Song were often chosen for their muscles and bravery; and sometimes, muscles and mathematical ability
Well in WW1 and WW2 we also drafted millions of people. That maybe why we had HW and Kennedy fighting. In comparison the wars we fight now are tiny when it comes to raw numbers. More Americans died in single battles of World War 2 than the entire Global War on Terror that we have waged since 2001.
The tiny wars of the British Empire were led by members of the aristocracy. The tiny wars of the American Empire, arguably since the First World War, but certainly since the Second, have been characterized by the “elites” getting us involved in wars in which there isn’t the remotest chance they’ll be exposed to physical or even financial harm.
To the extent that an Ivy League degree is an analogue for the elite in this country, American aviators in WW1 were heavily, almost entirely members of the elite and were exposed to great personal danger. The US Navy officer corps was almost entirely comprised of members of the WASP elite until the exigencies of the Second World War made that impossible to sustain. Again, those men faced very serious personal hazards.
Since those days, it’s been a case of cosseted, supercilious pr**ks deciding to throw our National weight around and pointing at their social inferiors while saying “Hey, let’s you and him fight!”
I don’t think Master Kong will help us in this situation. The heyday of Confucian governance didn’t often match of heyday of China. The problem is not we don’t resemble Ming dynasty, but we have come to resemble it. The literati in Ming dynasty were often just as venal and traitorous as our own and came off much worse with their predecessors of Han and Tang dynasty(through their Jin equivalent could match them in degeneracy).
One point Difference Maker touched on but failed to follow up is the extreme barbarity of Five Dynasties period had thoroughly discredited the old military aristocracies, which in turn made the rule by literati in Song and Ming dynasties possible. The close analogy to the West would be how both world wars discredited old military aristocracies despite all the more blood they have shed for their countries.
In both cases, the replacement are technocrats who legitimize themselves by ostensible meritocracies where merits are measured by esoteric knowledge, be it Confucian classics or woke platitudes. If you have to spend too much time to build your credentials on some obscure arcane knowledge in order to get into governance, you will end up a bug man. Gu Yanwu, one of the sharpest thinker of late Ming dynasty was harshly critical of such mentality. He was very much an advocate of going into the world and start doing things. Incidentally, Deng also advocated to find out the truth through practice.
One big problem is Confucian philosophy lack a theological justification for warrior aristocracy ethos even though Confucius was himself from that class(because in his time that was pretty much the default attitude, hence no need to codify it?). So over time, the bug men mentality keep cropping up whenever military aristocrats lost power.
The heydays of imperial China were overseen by military aristocracy whose violent urges were tempered by Confucian philosophy. The current Western elites are bug men who will prattle whatever platitude to justify their own venality. Master Kong will only change the aesthetic not the substance. Don’t say we need better elites, be the better elites. Some spirit of Gekokujō would only help.
@Difference Maker, thanks for the take on the history; I think there is some congruence there with idea of the Chinese system of scholar-officials (as it became through the Second Millennium AD) being dependent on the outcome of contingent events in this period (reinforced by later events like formation of steppe and foreign dynasties) and the incentives created by the Chinese pre-existing political system then and over time.
(And if we believe that the centralization of the Chinese Empire which was probably an outcome of geography as these “Fractured Land” or “Steppe Frontier” hypotheses present; where a large area of agriculturally productive open plains with no internal barriers adjacent to open steppes “gets” a large empire, then Confucian thought doesn’t even have the decisive role in that pre-existing system …!).
Though to try and be even-handed maybe I am also underrating that Confucian ideology delegitimized noble families more in those events and undermined their power than if we’d somehow had roughly a similar level of same political organization and similar event “shocks”, but an ideology like Buddhism, Islam, etc was instead more important and Confucian ideas less important? And so were Confucian ideas more decisive than I’ve given them credit for?
Wtf is a bug man?
As I understand it’s one of those terms like “Midwit”, “Upper Normie”, “NPC”, “Britpopper” (ranked in order from current/common/overlapping to old/ultra-niche/discrete).
To give a bit of a verbose read – all terms denoting the idea of a mass of very conventional upper-middle status individuals who “test well” on paper, display conventional markers of life success (usually of a sort that doesn’t demand so much focus to exclude them from the social life of the Chattering Classes), and who largely regurgitate the current canon of high status beliefs, without any challenge…
Who (per the idea) also aren’t really stress-tested or selected against high conformity pressures, nor are selected for independent thought and action at speed in response to unexpected problems (though they may be very tolerant of a “work hard; play hard” high expectations, high ambitions, high energy lifestyle generally), nor are selected to be particularly comfortable talking to and understanding society outside their own upper-middle-bourgeois-from-originally-lower-middle segment, nor strongly selected for actually *doing* anything where their mistakes have clear, material consequences and success/failure that can’t be talked around.
In theory, then higher achievers relative to the average, yet also… No better than average at dealing with mass conformity pressure from social media and from general social desirability. Bad at dealing with uncertainty in science and gauging actual importance of results (so end up with somewhat overconfident ideas of how much certainty we have in the scale of gains from trade, our confidence in first inefficacy-then-efficacy of masks to prevent disease spread, the likelihood of Covid19 being a lab leak, etc.) Bad at dealing with sudden changes in society that conflict with expectation of how the future ought to proceed – seeming sometimes less troubled by dissolution of local communities or globalisation linked economic disruption as is “supposed to happen” (inevitable consequence of inevitable modernisation or openess, which is coded as good), while disquieted by hedge funds getting put into a bad financial position by ordinary investors (even if they dislike hedge funds as per the dominant centre-left social convention!), because it’s not what is “supposed to happen” (the ordinary mass of investors are “not impressive” and people who are individually “impressive” and have merit are supposed to win out over people who are simply numerous).
Also, generally highly un-self-aware of any of these flaws (specifically thinking of themselves as bold, independent thinkers who do not conform to normal ideas spread by “The Establishment”, reach their own conclusions and would fiercely reject any suggestion to the contrary)!
A bit of a stereotype, and like most stereotypes, both a simplification and scape-goating that no-one would accept for themselves, and where the people using the stereotype themselves have more in common with it than they think (or would admit!), and so do their chosen leaders. Yet variations of it seem widely available enough not to be a complete category delusion…
I had long suspected both Vietnam and Korea were once under Chinese rule because both peoples’ naming conventions (almost) exclusively use Sino-Xenic vocabulary and largely follow Chinese naming conventions. I never considered the possibility that Korea could’ve adopted Chinese-style naming conventions without being as directly ruled by Imperial China as Vietnam was.
Can Hierarchies Be Rescued? By Chang Che
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/can-hierarchies-be-rescued/
“Daniel Bell and Pei Wang’s Just Hierarchy is a colorful exploration of the moral justifications behind elements of China’s success. Their thesis — a simple truism among Chinese but a potential setback for Western progressives — is that not all social hierarchies are bad, some are good, and a fixation on equality leaves little room to appreciate the benefits of the good ones. The authors are quick to denounce hierarchies on the basis of ascriptive categories such as race, sex, caste, and appearance (a qualification that injects a dose of progressivism into the aging corpus of Confucian thought). But this leaves other kinds of hierarchies, such as those based on age or merit, unexplained. We do not, for example, instinctively write off relationships between parents and children or teachers and students even though inequality is a shared feature of them all. What, then, makes these hierarchies different?”
I would say one major reason why Indian civilization has had a much greater influence on SE Asian peoples is likely down to earlier Indian maritime penetration into the region compared to the Chinese.
The Indians were already used to long distance maritime travel and trade from the Harappan era, which they likely continued once they reached the eastern coast. The earliest evidence of Indian contacts with SE Asia likely dates to 500 BC or earlier.
By the time, a Chinese civilizational consciousness took place, the Indian influence across SE Asia may already have had sunk its roots.
@Walter; interesting question as to whether Confucianism gives more “cultural tools” for Chinese to imagine merit-based hierarchy.
On the other hand, Daniel Bell? He’s the guy who was, back in 2010-2015, all in on this idea of:
“Oh, Communist Party cadres are totally just a repetition of the Chinese merit based bureaucracy! As contrasted with Western government which is not-at-all based on supposedly meritocratic appointment. No One-Party state politics of corrupt, graft, and nepotism, and no Marxist ideological biases here. Just ‘Merit’!”
proclaiming the Party to be the very spirit of Neoconfucianism reborn (“The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy” – 2015, “China’s New Confucianism” -2010, “Beyond Liberal Democracy” – 2006).
Not sure I’d totally want to treat him as the go-to-guy on the topic…