Benoit Vermander (魏明德)
Benoit Vermander lives in Shanghai. He teaches philosophy and religious anthropology at the University of Fudan.
China’s Resilience
Is this a delusion? In the near future will China meet with much more severe challenges than foreseen today? It is far from being impossible. However, China’s psychological resilience might prove to be a factor of economic resilience as well. The positive energy displayed by ordinary Chinese can help the country tackle its problems with resources not found in countries which suffer from a crisis of confidence and from doubts about their own future. Weathering a storm is largely a question of collective spirit, and economy has proven to be for a very large part a field of social psychology…
It remains that a reversal in the public feelings would be very dangerous for China - an especially volatile country. In other words, the stakes of the crisis are higher for China than for other nations: weathering the storm would be a resounding success giving even more significance to China’s rise; conversely, a breakup of public confidence would have consequences deeper and more far-reaching than anywhere else. China’s resilience makes a pessimistic scenario less likely than an analysis based on mere statistical data would suggest. It remains that resilience has limits and that a breakdown is still a working hypothesis.
Asia and Environmental Diplomacy
During the last 25 years or so, several significant documents and conferences testify to the development of environmental diplomacy as a choice area for multilateral, global cooperation: most often mentioned are the 1985 Vienna Convention on Protecting the Ozone Layer; the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer; the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development, and its offshoots, Agenda 21 and the Commission on Sustainable Development; the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change; the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity; the 1994 UN Conference on Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States; the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development; the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change; the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg, South Africa… Of decisive importance was the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro.
From what precedes it clearly appears that the prominent role now given to environmental diplomacy at the global level makes it impossible for any responsible nation-state not to actively participate in it. First, this derives from a sense of global responsibility. Second, the change in methods and focus that environmental diplomacy encompasses opens up new venues for a culture and a nation, allowing it to intensify and diversify its presence in the international arena. Finally, it allows a nation to encourage its citizens, its scientists, its entrepreneurs and its social agents to become a defining force of this global endeavor, such “democratizing” international relations..
At the same time, it should be recognized from the start that engaging into proactive environmental diplomacy comes with a requisite, i.e. making international and national policies fully congruent. If a nation engages further into the path of sustainable development, with all adjustments needed in terms of legal regulation, economic policies and social implications, then its sincerity will be recognized by the international opinion, and its moral status will be consequently enhanced. Conversely, if a nation’s international diplomacy does not go along concrete policies and far-reaching domestic initiatives, then it risks to be accused of making environmental diplomacy a ploy, weakening its moral status at a time when the effectiveness of national policies on the issues at stake is becoming the focus of attention.
The contribution of entrepreneurs and scientists is of primary importance. Developed nations have to take advantage of their energy-saving technologies and experience in solar power, organic agriculture, nature conservation, ecological tourism… in order to create more opportunities for environmental diplomacy. This should start from the example provided by their entrepreneurs. Responsible environmental behavior must not be limited to one’s territory but extend to all countries where industries have delocalized. The development of a culture of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) among a nation’s entrepreneurs will go a long way in helping her to achieve a decisive advantage through environmental diplomacy.
Summing up, environmental diplomacy should be based on citizens’ and entrepreneurs’ participation, technical cooperation with interested countries, spreading of knowledge and experience, and sense of global responsibility. Such strategy aims at creating model experiences in national policies, international pilot projects and institutional innovations. As illustrated above, there cannot be efficient and convincing environmental policy without a national policy of sustainable development that involves governmental agencies in charge of economic affairs, agriculture, the environment and, eventually, all public policies.
Nations, especially in Asia, must deploy an even greater inventiveness. This starts by paying an acute attention to the changing nature of global challenges. The ongoing debate on sustainability - with more specific questions on global warming, developmental model, use of energy resources, preservation of biodiversity as well as cultural diversity - is the most striking example of the questions that they must confront. It is not enough for Asian “dragons” to have been pioneers of accelerated growth and of democratization, they have now to be at the forefront of a new global battle: the one engaged for making sure that future generations will benefit from environmental, cultural and energy resources sufficient for ensuring the satisfaction of their needs. This is the ultimate rationale behind the rise of environmental diplomacy.
Local Democracy and Climate Change
Actually, when it comes to the relationship between city and global warming, much will depend on ourselves, on the moral and political environment that policy makers forge for urban dwellers and on the collective conscience that we will develop. In this regard, the role of locally elected officials is essential. The development of downtown, the connections between downtown and suburbs, the method of garbage collection and recovery, the renovation of the systems of water sanitation... Each time, these issues prove to be partly technical, partly political, for it is always necessary to challenge vested interests and viewpoints so as to build a city at once more hospitable, more balanced and more human. Local democracy helps to introduce clearly the choices and issues at stake, giving people information and criteria that will allow them to understand, taking into account the diversity of their viewpoints, how to meet the "general interest". Yes, it is through local democracy that will emerge responsible, compact and united cities, carrying an innovative environmental project.
When it comes to environmental issues, should not the cities of the world hold more local referenda? Without doubt this is a good way to settle in difficult situations, when the fight against global warming requires sacrifices (use of automobiles, water prices, choice of such investment rather than another ...) It is up to the citizens then duly informed, to state the scale of their priorities and their values… and to draw the consequences of them. So, let us make local democracy become a decisive factor in the global struggle against climate change!
(Photo: B.V.)
Buddhism and China’s Religious Awakening
In China, the temples asserted themselves very soon as the epicenter of the Buddhist expansion all over China: a liturgical place, the temple acts as a collective intercessor for the community of believers directing to it their wishes and their prayers, especially for the deceased; a place of learning, the great temples make it possible to carry on through several centuries the translation of the Buddhist canon into Chinese, one of the greatest editorial enterprises of history, and to multiply the interpretations of it; a place of power, the temple knows how to negotiate its relationship with the great men and women of the locality and then of the Empire, although this model was held at bay at the time of the big persecution of the ninth century, partly due to the concentration of wealth realized by the monastic communities.
The reconstruction of Chinese Buddhism after the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution relied therefore on the monastic institution, as it was already the case in other times. Furthermore, the recognition of the role of the Chinese Buddhist Association and the concomitant creation of “transmission belts” between the Power and the local religious organizations go hand in hand with a greater communication and solidarity between the various centers, big or small, which, taken as a whole, innervate Chinese Buddhism. In other words, Chinese Buddhism seems to be more robust and more interdependent today than at any time in the past.
It is not so easy to describe the Chinese Buddhist world in its totality. Monks and nuns, be they still novices or already ordained, are easily identified by their clothing, their tonsure, and, for those who have been ordained, by their ordination certificates as by the scars on the head following the fulfilled rites. But the faithful are not recognizable in the crowd of those who visit the temples, so great is the diversity of their motivations and behaviors. The quality of “Buddhist faithful” (jushi) is normally reserved for those who have formally taken refuge (guiyi) in the “three Jewels” (The Buddha, the Law, the Community) and in return have received a certificate, which they can show at the entrance of a temple to be exempted the admission fees or to get board and lodging for instance. The levels of membership are many and not always so clearly identified.
The visitor of a Buddhist monastery will generally be struck by the predominance of young monks, often already at the head of their monasteries, sometimes graduated from prestigious universities, and the production of this elite of clerics is facilitated by regulations reserving the admission into Buddhist studies centers to those of less than thirty years of age as an average. Beside these young monks, who are more and more engrossed in their tasks – construction of buildings, setting up of research centers, libraries of social institutions-, one will see usually some quite old and silent monks: entered at a very young age in the monasteries, and long before the turmoil of the sixties, they had already assimilated the spirit and the traditions of the School to which belonged their temple, and managed to survive and then to start anew some communities at the beginning of the eighties, before handing over their responsibilities to their successors.
Of course, with the passing of time, the absence of an intermediary generation, so much conspicuous between about 1985 and 2000, is less visible now, and the generation today in power has progressively asserted its experience and its authority. The nature and the exercise of this authority depend mostly on a transformation in the economic bases of the monasteries: the exploitation of the agricultural estates was replaced by an increased dependence on donations (from overseas first, then from local donors), on the help of the governmental agencies (for the reconstruction of buildings in particular), on the practice of rituals, and on some specialized productions. The monks affiliated to a given monastery receive generally a modest allowance, in nature or in cash, in return for their liturgical talents or by other services.
One cannot understand the present state of Chinese Buddhism by looking only at its two extremes – the time of its beginnings, when the look of the monastic community has taken form, and the reconstruction boom of the last two or three decades. One must also say a word about the ups and downs of its history throughout the last 150 years. For the destructions of the Cultural Revolution had been preceded by those of the Taiping Rebellion (1851-1864), particularly in South China, the traditional Buddhist bastion. The subsequent effort of reconstruction coincided then with the rising internal criticisms concerning the system of formation and the (non) effective aspects of precepts. Chinese Buddhism was entering the era of the aggiornamento. Some of the reformer monks advocated mainly going back to the ancient disciplines, selecting a small number of texts and practices of meditation to be privileged. A little later, another trend, of which the monk Taixu (1890-1947) is the most well known representative, undertook a modernization of Buddhism, following a way of doing close to that of the Chinese Republicans of the beginning of the last century – the ideal “science and democracy” applied, so to speak, to the religious sphere. The role of the laity was emphasized. The monastic education was also to approach the mode of the western universities. The creation, in this first half of the twentieth century, of the Chinese Buddhist Association, the popularization of a “humanistic Buddhism” or “Buddhism in the world” (renjian fojiao), the contacts between monks and political leaders of that time, all these characteristics have probably helped shape the look taken by the Chinese Buddhism when it recovered a relative freedom of movement after 1980. In the same time, the debates which characterized the revival of the years 1870-1940 are still present today within a Buddhist community which must from now on define its relationship with the post-modernity of a China in constant transformation.
According to the opinion of the majority of observers, and this in spite of the difficult interpretation of statistics, the two religions whose growth is today the fastest in China are obviously Buddhism and Christianity. A multiform growth, which must not hide the weaknesses, the divisions and the contradictions within these believing communities. The question of the stature and of the influence of Tibetan Buddhism with respect to Han Buddhism will mark the next development of the first of these two religions. And the influence of the evangelist groups, or, on the contrary, syncretists, within Catholicism as well as within Protestantism, will determine the final relation between Christianity on one hand, and Chinese society and power on the other one – Christianity being perceived by the authorities with more suspicion than a Buddhism reputed more “national” and politically accommodating. But still, it is the very interaction between these two religions which is going also to exert its influence on the future outlines of the Chinese civilian society, reducing it to a series of juxtaposed communities, mutually ignoring the groups nearby, or favoring mutual understanding and interconfessional collaboration. If both believing expressions, as one may assume, go beyond the present stage of their growth crisis, if both can assert themselves as authentically “Chinese” and nevertheless universal religions, their interaction will determine how China takes part in the cultural globalization.
To know more on this topic, read C. Cochini’s book (in French)
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Fatherhood as Withdrawal
My father died at 47. I was then 18, and my younger sister was 10. His own father had died when he was 15 or 15 if I remember well. My mother’s father died when she was 7. It means that, in our family, we have experienced what the loss of a father feels like, and we know what its long-term consequences are, when it comes to family equilibrium and psychological development.
What I want to stress here is that not all consequences are negative. In some respect, a good father remains a father in death, as withdrawal is an inherent part of a father’s role. What it means to be a father evolves with the coming of age of a son or daughter. However, very quickly, a father proves to be truly a “good” one if he is able to withdraw, to give space to the growth of his children – it might be what the Bible tells us when it is said that on the seventh day God rested: the creation was now the playing ground of His children, and He was giving them the space needed for becoming themselves and continue His work.
A father is an authority figure, even if he has to show a loving and compassionate face. He is the one who gives the Law, who teaches the rules that makes it possible to live as a human being in harmony with the rest of the species. The Law is ultimately the setting that allows us to grow as being “one among other people”, with our rights and duties. But he also has to make his children discover that the Law is for growth and freedom, not for enslaving them, not for cloistering them within the age of childhood and irresponsibility. He has to “let it go”, to retreat from the Law he gave them, so that they can interpret it, understand it in their own terms, and ultimately make the Law their own, as they will be able to transmit it to their own children. He is a father because he enables children to become father on their own terms, not according to a ready-to-made model.
As I grow older, I remember more vividly things that my father said and did, I remember his way of reacting to people and situation, his inner joy and his frailties, I make his life experience mine, not that I am repeating it – not in the least -, but rather because it provides me with renewed insights. In the process, I feel as if my own father was growing within me, as if I was becoming responsible of his ultimate destiny. The best of what he lived for, the meaning and essence of his existence, all of this is now entrusted to me, and I have to transmit it in new and inventive ways, so that the common tree that humankind is called to become may continue to grow and to bear fruits.
Millennium Goals or Global Warming?
Struggle against poverty is still very much on the agenda. At the same time, mobilization has been far below what is deemed necessary for achieving such a lofty goal. And we might now witness a subtle trade-off between two objectives: eradicating poverty and alleviating global warming. For sure, the two goals are not contradictory per se, they are even mutually reinforcing: eradicating poverty will prove to be impossible if natural disasters caused by climatic changes occur in Africa or impoverished Asian coastlines. Deforestation and water depletion diminish the meager capital that many populations have to rely upon for earning an income. However, international credit allocation obeys to bargaining laws and power games, and these games might actually benefit rising developing nations rather than the ones suffering from extreme poverty – the latest counting for around one sixth of the world’s population. Developing nations contribute to the rise in carbon emissions and rely on highly polluting technologies: subsidies for cleaning up the environment will go primarily to them. When poverty is such that you do not contribute to greenhouses emissions you might be left out of the new distribution mechanisms of global subsidies… Global warming would such become a pretext for developed nations to spread and sell their technologies, and for middle—income nations to profit from an array of international subsidies.
World governance is still suffering from a lack of comprehensive mechanisms that would allow people to arbitrate between priorities and policy choices. Still, from now on, the struggle against poverty and the one against global warming must be conceived and implemented together rather than risking to become, even partly, a kind of trade-off – in which case the losers of the game would be, once again, the poorest of the poor. This shows that the struggle against global warming cannot be considered as a mere technical challenge bur rather as a political and humanist endeavor. It is not enough of a Al Gore for tackling the issue. We also need a Gandhi who would remind us of the humane, social and spiritual issues at stake.
Photo by Liang Zhun
Vanishing Land and Growing Cities
Not so long ago, Chen Xiwen, vice-minister of the Central Office on Financial and Economic Affairs, said that “disputes about possession of land are the cause of more than 50% of all social protests”. Indeed, in today’s China, the path of urbanizations and subsequent tensions about the use of land are the structural reasons for the gravest protests. The issue links together environmental and social concerns.
Urban population is expected to continue growing by as much as 15 million annually. There are already 90 cities with more than a million residents. The World Bank predicts that China’s urban population (430 million in 2001) will double to 850 million by 2015, bringing the urbanization rate to 57%, from 36% in 2000. At the same time, the number of Chinese cities of 100,000 persons or more is expected to increase from 630 in 2001 to over 1,000 by 2015. For sure, this does not correspond to the number of people moving into cities. On the one hand, migrant workers might go unreported. On the other hand, “towns’ are regularly reinforced and enlarged for reaching the rank of “cities’, which allows for the inclusion of their inhabitants into the categories of ‘urban dwellers’ at some point. Most important: the population is classified by the registration status into “agricultural” and “non-agricultural “. “Of the 430 million individuals with “non-agricultural registration” (thus officially urban) in 1999, 37.2 per cent (160 million) were resident in rural counties, not in urban districts. On the other hand, around 38.6 per cent of long-term residents of urban districts (101 million) carried agricultural registration and were thus regarded as part of the rural population, even though most of these no longer had any relation with farming.” (Athar Hussain, International Labor Office, ” Urban Poverty in China: Measurement, Patterns and Policies”)
Forty million farmers have lost their land over the past decade due to urbanization, with another 15 million to suffer a similar fate over the next five years, according to a report from the Ministry of Labor and Social Security in July, 2006. Disputes on land expropriation and property rights are brewing everywhere. The Property Law finally passed by the NPA in March 2007 defined private wealth, including income, houses, investments and other personal assets. However, it maintained the concept that property is owned publicly, and individuals are merely given a right to use that property. It is that right of use that the law protects, not private ownership of land. However, the law also explicitly gives farmers the right to renew their land-use leases after they expire.
The issue is further complicated by the poor quality and scarcity of China’s land. Over the last ten years, China has lost almost 8 million hectares of farmland, and the process is continuing at a pace of 200,000 to 300,000 hectares a year. Some studies even expect that ten additional million of arable lands could be lost by 2030. The ecology of 60 per cent of the country’s territory is considered fragile. A national study in 2000 rated the ecological quality of one-third of the country’s territory as good and another third as bad. About 90 per cent of natural pasture land, which accounts for more than 40 per cent of the country’s territory, is facing degradation and desertification to some extent. Desertified pastures have become the major source of sand and dust storms. Acid rain falls on 30% of the country; affecting the quality of soil.
The answer to the questions raised by China’s pace of urbanization will not be solved by legal means only. Should not the quality of urbanization take precedence over the rest? And should not small and medium towns be revalorized in a way that fosters more diverse, sustainable ways of living? The use of land and the pace of urbanization constitute the focal points around which all the challenges linked to China’s development and social model are presently evolving.
Knowledge Networks
The reach and efficiency of networks has been greatly enhanced by the Internet. This might be partly because the Internet allows for horizontal relationships, and that horizontal relationships are very much at the core of networking, distinguishing networks from other organizational structures.
Exchange of knowledge is another characteristic of networks. This is already true of “social networks”, exemplified by the Old Boys associations. For sure, social networks primarily provide emotional and cultural support, but they constitute also the port through which information that might help one to change one’s career path or get valuable tips on the stock market are exchanged. Information becomes even more central when we come to what can be labeled as “knowledge networks”: this kind of networks is basically a space for discussion that helps to determine research directions (for an academic community) or action strategies (for an association of people and groups committed to a social or environmental cause for instance.) For putting it another way, it is only within knowledge networks that “information” truly becomes “knowledge”, i.e. is crystallized into a body of consistent and mutually reinforcing assumptions. It is also within knowledge networks that knowledge receives a meaning that leads a group to enact value judgments and maybe to decide on a course of action.
The need to connect together scientific assessments, policymaking and grassroots activism explains the spread of knowledge networks. Also, the globalization of issues such as environment, violence, international trade and workers’ rights induces people to connect to groups that share similar concerns in various cultural and political contexts. International networks are partly a product of the eroding power of the Nation-State, and partly a response to the increased influence of other players, such as multinational companies.
Willemijn Verkoren has identified a few conditions under which knowledge networks can function correctly (International Journal of Peace Studies, 11-2, 2006). I rephrase here in my own way those that seem to me more important:
1) The network does not exist in isolation; exchanges going through the network and real life activities are linked in a sustainable way.
2) The purpose of networking is clear, as are the possibilities offered by the network and the limits of what it can achieve.
3) Capacity for learning, room for discussion, and openness in membership, discussion and sharing are requisites for the efficacy of the network.
4) While being able to operate autonomously, the network must be linked to a wider environment, to enable it to give and to receive.
5) Results of the interaction have to be visible at some stage.
6) To facilitate and moderate a network requires time and expertise.
7) Finally, the flexibility of the network helps it to facilitate exchanges, action and empowerment without trespassing over its boundaries, rather than aiming to become an all-encompassing knowledge system.
In the field of social action, there might be not stronger incentive to the spreading of the knowledge network model than the concerns raised around the sustainability of our economies and the current world governance system. The debate on climatic change shows that scientific conclusions are themselves reached through the nurturing of a permanent network of information and debate. The policy debate is nurtured by different (and often diverging) networks of citizens, experts and companies. Interconnection between these groups helps to go from traditional lobbying to innovative networking, and the growing debate on facts and values is conducive of such interconnections. Technical expertise is not sufficient for tackling such a broadly-shaped issue, and groups of citizens will continue to debate on consumption models, the resurgence of values such as frugality and solidarity, hopefully advancing towards formulations and insights that will develop a cultural model in line with the technical imperatives linked to the issue at stake. The mobilization of cultural resources for nurturing sustainable development - a mobilization achieved through a dialogue on core values, sharing of success stories and exchange of strategic analyses - is exactly what a knowledge network might want to achieve.
Maybe it would be useful for all of us to reflect on the following questions:
- What are the knowledge networks that I am presently engaged into?
- Are these networks akin to my real interests and current concerns, or should I try to engage into new ones?
- May I possibly be active in a web of relationships that could happily develop into a real knowledge network, sharing information among its members and with other networks, provided that I encourage the group to take the necessary steps for becoming more reflexive and participatory?
- What kind of knowledge networks does my environment need, and may I be instrumental in fostering such alliances?
May our online interactions and our real life activities follow more and more the model sketched here, so as to overcome the feeling of impotence that often overwhelms all of us. Our participation in some kind of knowledge networks should encourage us to become active citizens of a world whose destiny will finally be determined by the quality of the networking we enter into and the course of actions that naturally follows.
International Institute for Sustainable Development: about knowledge networks
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Beyond Superstition
Social sciences (especially anthropology and sociology of religion) provide us with a rich array of accounts and analyses on the forms that these rituals and beliefs take throughout ages and culture. However, I would like now to go beyond the objectivist attitude of the social scientist and share a few thoughts and impressions that my observation of Yi religion has arisen in me. First and foremost, I have been struck from the start by the fact that belief in spirits had to do with the struggle for life in a very difficult natural environment. Issues of life and death are surrounding the Nuosu (Sichuan Yi) family all the time. Illness, hunger, cold are still the basic facts to be dealt with. In this perspective, the belief in spirits and the rituals that come along are a way to give an account of the duress of life and to find some practical and existential response to the pain that comes from the death of one’s child, the affliction of a physical handicap, the hardships that arise from the life in mountains.
Second observation: the rituals express the solidarity that links together a family or a neighborhood. The efficiency of a ritual comes primarily from its collective character, the grouping of relatives of friends around the body of the sick person. I found very moving the discreet gestures of solidarity and tenderness that are given to the sick while the ritual is performed. Ritual is about compassion and comfort. As I pointed out already, the spirits represent the dark side of solitude, selfishness, lack of proper social behavior. From a theological perspective, I see in a ritual of exorcism an expression of the alliance that binds together a community. Such alliance is not only social, it is also religious in nature. Conversely, a religious alliance has a social component from the very start. The Bible teaches us that justice and pity within the community are the tenets of a proper alliance between a community and God Himself. Expelling the spirits while expressing compassion and comfort is to renew a social and family alliance that prepares the binding together of this given community and the God who dwells among us.
As I said already, it is very striking that the form taken by the expulsion of evil and the restoration of the physical and social body is a sacrificial meal. Sharing together the food that has been offered in sacrifice is the best answer that can be given to the forces of solitude and disruption. The sharing of such meals during rituals has helped me to understand better the anthropological roots of the sacrament of the Eucharist. It has helped me to see this sacrament a process of healing and reconciliation because it has been prepared and is still prefigured by the way cultures and societies have dealt with violence, illness and death throughout the ages: they have made the sharing of meals the norm of human existence, they have made the taking of meals, where everyone receives what he/she is entitled to, the real means to restore personal and social health. Eating and drinking together in an orderly fashion is to seal an alliance, to seal the promise that justice and solidarity will ultimately be stronger than solitude, violence, illness and death.
Summing up, the belief in spirits and the way people deal with them through rituals often express deep intuitions on the ills that threaten the social body. They also express profound intuitions on the fact that solidarity, self-sacrifice and communal sharing are prerequisites for preserving or restoring human existence and dignity. When the beliefs and rituals proper to a culture express the way human relationships are meant to be if we want to ensure healing and reconciliation, then God is dwelling among us.
My trip to the Yangjuan school
Possibly influenced by the volunteers from outside world, people around the school behaved towards us in a very friendly way. A three days stay is a very short time indeed, but it was enough for me to witness the huge changes having happened spiritually, materially and emotionally since the school was built in 1999-2000. At the same time, though moved by the grateful words that the Abu (grandfather) of the Mgebu family was repeating now and then, I could but not feel the harshness and gloom that the geographical factors bring to the people here: soil erosion, landslides, hihgland climate, traffic inconvenience, poor power supply and communication signals, etc... Moreover, either allured or stressed by the modern life outside, most of the grownups go out to do find work in the big cities, while leaving the old and weak to do the farming.
I respect these simple and earthy people so much! They do not expect much from life, but they hope that the younger generation will have better living conditions as well as a better education, in order to become men and women of worth.
When the time came of bidding farewell, I could not keep wishing that the road be finished so that the villagers could have a better access to the county township; that there be a solar power accumulator so that they would not be worry about power cuts; and that there be a green house for each family so that they need not go a long way to buy vegetables, thus avoiding vitamin shortage. Deep in my thoughts, I went away from the Yangjuan school...
New Wine and Old Skins
(Speech delivered at the meeting of the US Catholic China Bureau, University of San Francisco, February 1999)
"Nobody puts new wine into old wineskins; if he does, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost and the skins too. No! New wine, fresh skins!" (Mk 2, 22)
Is the parable recorded by Mark relevant for envisioning the coming of Peace and Justice, as proclaimed by the Gospel, in the Chinese context? In other words, can Peace and Justice, or, in a broader sense, can the spirit of the Beatitudes accommodate to insights brought by ancient Chinese culture and philosophy? Will new interpretations, new intellectual ventures reconcile the novelty of the Kingdom with the seemingly timeless character of Chinese wisdom?
- Of course, the so-called “spontaneous” or “natural” understanding of peace and justice can be challenged as belonging solely to the Western “cultural” worldview. This is why we have also to ask ourselves whether traditional Chinese culture and philosophy embodies approaches to peace and justice fundamentally different from the concepts that were developed in the West or the ones promoted by Christianity (the two being linked but remaining distinct in several ways). The debate is very similar to the questions raised on the universality of human rights or the specificity of "East Asian values." Such a debate is important, insofar as it might determine the relevancy of what Christians want to contribute, and the relationship they develop with Chinese culture.
- The third set of questions is somehow at the crossroad of the two first ones: what is the set of standards and values that Chinese people are able to mobilize today when trying to define a meaningful course of social and cultural development? Are there consensual or, at least, acceptable references for defining within the Chinese context what a peaceful and just developmental process should be? This set of questions is markedly different from the preceding one: it does not focus on traditional Chinese culture per se, but rather on the various interpretations given of this cultural pattern as well as of Western culture as it is now grounded into the Chinese psyche. The question is not to define theoretical grounds for such a developmental process but rather to pragmatically assess the intellectual resources that help to give meaning to what happens in society. This is the approach I am now going to develop.
Harmony and Modernization
The premises of the promoters of the "culture of peace and cooperation" can be summarized rather easily:
- Hehe is the prominent value of the Chinese humanist culture, encompassing all schools and religious traditions. Hehe wenhua expresses the quintessence of the Taoist, Buddhist and Confucian traditions put together.
- This common nucleus is to be enhanced and interpreted anew in order to answer the challenges that the world confronts as it enters a new millenium. These challenges come from conflicts between man and nature, man and society, man and man, man and his own soul, as well as conflicts between civilization and civilization. In addition, this re-interpretation is necessary to help China to answer the crises brought by the increasing contacts with the West and by modernization.
- Hehe is a mode of existence. As an efficient wisdom of life, it is a contribution of Chinese culture to the whole of humankind. The hehe school constitutes the interpretation and development of this wisdom.
- The hehe school starts by recognizing the importance and reality of differences, oppositions and conflicts. Be it in the cosmological sphere (the yin and the yang, Heaven and man), the epistemological paradigm (the five agents), the social sphere (the five relationships), differences are subsumed without being annihilated, and, consequently, the process of unification is not different from the process of generating differences. Conflict is the cause of fusion; fusion is the fruit of conflict. In the traditional Chinese philosophical vocabulary, Harmony is seen as the natural fruit of the process of generation and regeneration (sheng sheng bu xi).
- In this respect, Harmony is not a static concept, it means to enter into the process of change, and change is transformation, communication, fluidity
- By accentuating the role of conflict, differences or fluidity, the Hehe school thus criticizes some aspects of traditional Chinese thought on Harmony. It especially emphasizes the role of mediations, of symbolism, in order to go beyond oversimplified expressions of traditional Chinese thought such as "unity of Man and Heaven" or "unity of knowledge and action." Actually the process of renewal of Chinese culture that the hehe schools aims to exemplify has to follow the pattern of thought of this very culture. In other words, this renewal itself has to be a process of "generation and regeneration" going from difference to unity and from unity to difference.
I will not describe further this attempt to build up a culture of "harmony and cooperation." First, the presentation given by our authors is often extremely repetitive. Second, we are more interested here in the meaning of such an attempt than in its actual elaboration. What I intend to do now is to raise a few questions on the relevance of this new form of a culture of harmony for today’s China. This will lead us to specify what might be the Christian viewpoint on that matter.
The framing of tradition: from Harmony to Equality
Towards a Christian challenge
My task tonight is almost ended. It was to point out some of the resources and ambiguities of the Chinese tradition as it is interpreted today. Others will now discuss what can be the Christian input when it comes to issues of justice and peace in China. I will myself enter directly into this discussion tomorrow night. It seemed to me that starting, even briefly, from the perspective developed by contemporary Chinese intellectuals could be stimulating for our debate, and this is why I choose to discuss hehe wenhua in the first place.
Communication and Jesuit Mission
- Abstract -
"What I intend to do in here is to reflect upon the experience we have developed at the Taipei Ricci Institute during the past ten years or so. The underlying question can be summarized as follows: how did a Jesuit-run research center on traditional Chinese culture evolve into a network trying to build new lines of communication in China to help to redefine what is at stake in China today in the broader context of sustainable development and world governance issues to foster a sense of mission and urgency among Jesuits?"
- I - The Ricci Institute: a historical background
- II – Vision, Tradition and Trials: 1966-1996
- III – The Ricci in Transition: 1996-2003
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