provocative view of George Zhibin Gu of China :
understand China's corruptive government and politics in light of history
(George Zhibin Gu is an author of several new books on China and globalization, including: China's global reach, China and the new world order, and Made in China)
It has been interesting to read the comments by WAISers on Confucius and other classic Chinese writings. To me, there is a great need to study the circumstances in which these ideas emerged.
Indeed, Confucius or Mencius intellectually responded to the urgent issues their eras faced, along with other influential thinkers. Now, the old eras are little understood, while Confucius and Mencius have become doctrines as well as political cults for political bodies for ages until the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911.
From an intellectual point of view, Lao Zi and Zhuang Zi are more exciting and challenging. Again, their ideas are a direct response to a cruel political environment in which self-appointed, self-serving political bodies preyed on society and the people. These thinkers offered challenging advice on how to escape the cruel environment people faced in their eras, along with other ideas for the rulers. Their ideas are greatly relevant today, for China's self-appointed political body remains. What is more, this self-appointed government body remains inherently self-serving and stands as an oppressor politically, and a squeezer economically (without knowing this basic
issue, there is no way to understand today's China or its past history).
Furthermore, in the government's point of view, the Legalist group of thinkers has been most influential, which is little understood even today. The legalist thinkers were basically political consultants who offered concrete methods for the rulers on how to control people and how to extract wealth from society without causing unwanted troubles for the rulers. Their ideas are little analysed and challenged, which is part of the fact that China's universal rights of government has never been truly challenged. On the contrary, those people who aid government's expansion of power over the society and people are rewarded.
Since early 1900s, Marxism has become a new slogan for political bodies and social life. But it has remained a set of slogans, a cult to be more precise, for the latest self-appointed government to employ. In reality, even without this new cult, the Communist government would have existed in the same manner in its relations with society and the people--no more, no less. In essence, China's communist power is no more than another self-appointed, self-serving dynastic government in China's long dynastic history, and therefore faces the same type of built-in problems as before. What is more, this Communist power has pushed the worst things of the past dynastic rulers to the extreme: it has hardly invented anything new in its relations with society and the people as well as its internal world (which is greatly explored in my books).
In short, all these challenging ideas should be best studied in a context of historical evolution in relation to society, government, people and life. What is more, in a globalized world today, they must be placed in a global, intellectual context, which would be more meaningful as well as needed.
For information about the World Association of International Studies (WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on:
http://wais.stanford.edu/ John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA