The Post-American World - Fareed Zakaria [55]
Early Enlightenment thinkers celebrated Confucianism for its reliance on reason rather than on divinity as a guide to human affairs. A thesis developed: While Europe might be far ahead in scientific and technological progress, China had “a more advanced ethics,” a “superior civil organization” (based on merit, not patronage), and a “practical philosophy,” all of which “successfully produced a social peace and a well-organized social hierarchy.” The “climax” of Enlightenment sinophilia came with Voltaire’s 1759 Essai sur les moeurs, in which, according to the German scholar Thomas Fuchs, he “transformed China into a political utopia and the ideal state of an enlightened absolutism; he held up the mirror of China to provoke self-critical reflection among European monarchs.”12 In the following year, that most enlightened of monarchs, Frederick the Great, wrote his Report of Phihihu, a series of letters from a fictitious Chinese ambassador in Europe to the emperor of China. Frederick’s purpose was to contrast the bigotry of the Catholic Church with Chinese rationality.
Westerners have often found it difficult to understand the difference between the place of religion in China and its place in the West. Consider the experiences of a Portuguese missionary in the Far East, Matteo Ricci, as recounted by the great Yale historian Jonathan Spence.* In his early days in China in the 1580s, Ricci, in an effort to present himself as an honored figure, shaved his head and beard and shrouded himself in the robes of a Buddhist. Only several years later did Ricci realize how misguided this was. Monks and holy men were not held in high esteem in China. He began traveling by sedan chair, or hiring servants to carry him on their shoulders, “as men of rank are accustomed to do,” Ricci later wrote to Claudio Acquaviva, general of the Jesuits, in 1592. “[T]he name of foreigners and priests is considered so vile in China that we need this and other similar devices to show them that we are not priests as vile as their own.” By 1595, Ricci had cast off the ascetic trappings of a monk, which had hindered his missionary work, and instead adopted the dress of a Confucian scholar. Ricci had at first scorned the Confucians for not believing in God, paradise, and the immortality of the soul. The Confucian school, Ricci wrote to a friend, was “the true temple of the literati.” But he eventually saw that even though Confucianism maintained “a strictly neutral stance” toward matters of God and the afterlife, it had a strong sense of ethics, morality, and justice. Like other Enlightenment figures, he came to believe that the West should learn from Confucianism.
What does God have to do with foreign policy? Historically, countries influenced by Christianity and Islam have developed an impulse to spread their views and convert people to their faith. That missionary spirit is evident in the foreign policy of countries as diverse as Britain, the United States, France, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. In the case of Britain and the United States, perhaps because they have been so powerful, the Protestant sense of purpose at the core of their foreign policies has made a deep mark on global affairs. China, in contrast, may never acquire a similar sense of destiny. Simply being China, and becoming a world power, in a sense fulfills its historical purpose. It doesn’t need to spread anything to anyone to vindicate itself. So when Beijing seems bloodless in its stance on human rights, it is not simply that the regime is oppressive or takes a ruthlessly realpolitik view of its interests—though that certainly plays a role. The Chinese see these issues differently, not with a set of abstract rights and wrongs but with a sense of the practical that serves as a guiding philosophy.
Western businessmen have often noted that their Chinese counterparts seem to place less stock in rules, laws, and contracts. Their sense of ethics is more situational. If a Chinese businessman or official