China

The social values and history have shaped and formed the economical developments and the current environment of business in the People’s Republic of China. They have determined the patterns for negotiation and the Chinese perceptions of business, and their feelings towards westerners. The implicit and explicit rules that the Chinese society has on the development of businesses, and the economy in general, are very important issues for any person going into China to understand and consider. In order to achieve a successful partnership between Chinese and Western cultures it is essential to have a basic understanding of history and cultural developments that have shaped the current environment of business. The three pillars of China are economy, culture, and society.

Economy

The Chinese economy has been formed as a result of centuries of history and development, which reflect the philosophy of China and its current economical position. China started as a mainly agricultural based society with the subsistence group; the family. For more than 2000 years the Chinese economy operated under a type of feudal system; land was concentrated in the hands of a relatively small group of landowners whose income depended on rents from their peasant tenants. Agricultural taxes levied by the imperial government and crop yields subject to drought and floods kept agriculture relatively underdeveloped and organized in small units with the use of primitive methods for basic subsistence.

The conclusion of the Opium War of 1840 formally initiated a period of Western penetration of China from the coastal treaty ports. Railroads and highways were constructed, and some industrial development began. Such activity had little impact, however, on the overall Chinese economy. In effect, China was carved up into a number of competing colonial spheres of influence. Japan, which tried to attach China to its East Asia prosperity Sphere, was able to create only isolated nodes of a modern economy.

The Chinese Communist party emerged in the 1920s in the midst of a mounting economic crisis caused by foreign intervention and increased landlord influence in the countryside. For more than two decades, it expanded its control over large rural areas by introducing an agrarian program based on the control of rent and usury, and by giving power to peasant associations. On October 1, 1949, the Communist party successfully established a unified national government and economy on the mainland for the first time since the end of the imperial period in 1912. From 1949 to 1952 the emphasis was on halting inflation and ending food shortages and unemployment.

The new government initiated a land reform program that redistributed land to 300 million poor peasants into cooperative farms. In 1958 the rural people’s communes were established, and these dominated agriculture in China until the early 1980s. The commune was based on the collective ownership of all land and major tools by its members, who produced mainly to meet state planning targets and who were rewarded according to the work they performed, although basic necessities were guaranteed to all members.

In the urban-industrial sector, state ownership of property and of industrial and commercial enterprises was gradually extended. Industry grew steadily from heavy investment under the first five-year plan, and the state-owned sector achieved an overwhelming importance. The second five-year plan was introduced in 1958, trying to get China ahead into industrialization. This program was characterized by large investments in heavy industry and the establishment of small-scale versions of such industries as steel refining. The program, however, caused great disruptions in economic management and in rational economic growth, and in 1960 the program had to be abandoned.

The Chinese economy then entered a period of readjustment, but by 1965 production in many fields again approached the level of the late 1950s. The third five-year plan began in 1966, but both agricultural and industrial production were severely curtailed by the effects of the Cultural Revolution; a fourth five-year plan was introduced in 1971 as the economy began its recovery.

After eliminating the vestiges of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, China’s leaders decided to move at a faster pace on all economic fronts to make up for the loss suffered in the preceding ten years. A fifth five-year program began in 1976 but was interrupted in 1978, when the Four-Modernization program was launched. It included the modernization of agriculture, industry, national defense, and science and technology. A ten-year plan for 1976-85 stressed improvement in economic management and a larger role for private and collectively owned (as opposed to state-owned) enterprises.

This program was superseded by a more modest ten-year plan for 1981-90, but efforts to attract Western technology and investment continued, as did a program of incentives to increase agricultural production. Policies introduced in October 1984 called for further decentralization of economic planning and for increased reliance on market forces to determine the prices of consumer goods.

China has potential to be the biggest market of the world with 1.3 billion people. Furthermore, it posses billions of unexplored resources and the biggest and cheapest labor force in Asia. The size and underdevelopment make it a potential monster that has created interest in every investing and developing country in the world. The Chinese economy is an increasing economic possibility for anyone.

Culture & Society Chinese culture and society can be divided into two major periods, Imperial China and Communist China. The modern Chinese society can be defined as a combination of centuries of values and communist propaganda achievements. The imperial China had a strong class system where 90% of the people were poor and possessed limited resources to develop culturally, socially and personally. This situation led to the strength of the large family and the basis for the distinctive collectivism of China. The well being of the family and the state are the main goals for any action in society. If actions taken do not contribute to the family or the society as a whole, then the actions will not be regarded as proper. Eliminating almost any form of individualistic thinking.

The Chinese Family is the main economic unit of society. The development of the Chinese economy is based on the family. The Chinese family is the economic unit in which members produce and consume in common. Also, it is the religious unit responsible for the performing of rites required for the well being of the family. The social security of the Chinese family relies on the effective performance and interaction between religion and family.

These concepts strongly clash with western individualism collection of wealth for personal gain. A clear example of this is the overseas Chinese control family-run business empires that already dominate much of Asia. They invest billions in China, helping their ancestral homeland become the world’s fastest-growing economy. Together, China and its approximately 56 million offshore Chinese are the most important commercial and political forces for China and reflect, again the family based economic strategy that they follow.

In addition to the traditional imperial Chinese society, the Communist values shape and blend into modern Chinese philosophy. One of the early acts of the Chinese Communist party after it gained control in 1949 was to officially eliminate organized religion. Previously the dominant religions in China had been Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. Most temples and schools of these four religions were converted to secular purposes. Only with the constitution of 1978 was official support again given for the allowance of formal religion in China. The constitution also stated that the Chinese population had the right to hold religious beliefs.

Moreover, China has a long and rich cultural tradition in which education has played a major role. Throughout the imperial period (221 BC-AD 1912), only the educated have held positions of social and political leadership. In 124 BC the first university was established for training prospective bureaucrats in Confucian learning and the Chinese classics. Historically, however, few Chinese have been able to take the time to learn the complex language and it’s associated literature. It is estimated that as late as 1949 only 20% of China’s population was literate. To the Chinese Communists, this illiteracy was a stumbling block for the promotion of their political programs. Therefore, the Communists combined political propaganda with educational development.

Chinese education has been strongly affected by the communism in China. Since education was for the rich and privileged during imperial age of China. One of the most ambitious programs of the Communist party has been the establishment of universal public education for their large population. In the first two years of the new government (1949-51) more than 60 million peasants enrolled in “winter schools,” or sessions, established to take advantage of the slack season for agricultural workers. Mao declared that a dominant goal of education was to reduce the sense of class distinction. This was to be accomplished by reducing the social gaps between manual and mental labor, between the city and countryside residents and between the worker in the factory and the peasant on the land.

After long periods of breaks and changes in policies colleges reopened in 1970-72. Admission was granted to many candidates because of their political leanings, party activities, and peer-group support. This method of selection ceased in 1977, as the Chinese launched their new campaign for the Four Modernizations. The governments stated goals for rapid modernization in agriculture, industry, defense, and science and technology required high levels of training. Such educational programs by necessity had to be based on theoretical and formal skills more than on political attitudes and the spirit of revolution.

After the revolution every thing changed in China. The stability of social values and structure where the highest achievement for the Chinese philosophy. These values where already deep in the Chinese culture; however, they were strengthened with communism and used into the development of China.

The Chinese society had become a combination of strong family and moral values and a country thriving for modernization and industrialization. This concept of stability as the highest achievement obstructed the development of China in the past, and still creates problems today. The sole concept of risks disturbs the grounds of Chinese culture in contrast to western society where risk is the main drive for development and investment.

Business Development in China

The radical change from imperialism and strong class differences to the equality philosophy implemented by Mao Tse Tung created the modern China. Its development from feudalism to communism created a conservative China, with very few attempts to move towards capitalism. It was through the imperial years that mercantilism and trade took place, yet it never flourished, as the capitalistic model westerners know, until China’s re-opening to the western world in the 70’s.

China has always had the elements for development. In fact, they could very well have had an industrial revolution before England. China possessed many key elements that transformed Europe into a modernized industrial economy (compass, printing, gunpowder, etc). Nevertheless, there is much more to China than just industrial and economical development. Thus, when considering developing a business in China one should always consider the cultural factors that makes the Chinese society so strong and differentiating it from western societies.

The fact that China wants to grow, does not mean that it will do it with the western models and philosophy, rather it will be with models developed from their own culture. This is the point that can be attributed to cause most of the problems between Chinese and Western cultures, and the point to be accepted in order to be successful in developing a successful business relationship in China.

Negotiating in China can be very frustrating. Differences in decision making styles and negotiating tactics cause misunderstanding and tension. Chinese culture is based on the importance of rituals and ceremonies and so is Chinese business. Business meetings are as important as the dealings during receptions. To exemplify the process of dealing with China in order to develop a productive relationship we will use the case of Kentucky Fried Chicken in China. This case includes the different problems and strategies used in the negotiation and development of business in China, specifically in setting up a foreign joint venture. However, the problems that arise and the current working environment of the Chinese economy cannot be understood without first understanding the history and the cultural revolutions that have shaped it. This brief outline of the history of China leads insight into some of the problems and the resolutions that a manager for KFC experienced during his venture with the Chinese.

One of the most important inventions of all time was the invention of gunpowder. Imagine their enemy’s surprise when the Chinese first demonstrated their newest invention in the eighth century AD. Chinese scientists discovered that an explosive mixture could be produced by combining sulfur, charcoal, and saltpeter (potassium nitrate). The military applications were clear. New weapons were rapidly developed, including rockets and others that were launched from a bamboo tube (Franklin Institute). The Chinese are known for their inventions that still are used in the modern day.

Those inventions are paper, gunpowder, books, and much more. Gunpowder was discovered in the tenth century by Chinese medicine men that were looking for the secret to immortality. They thought that gunpowder could be used as a medicine of some sort. The invention of gunpowder gave the Chinese a distinct advantage over their enemies, changing the nature of warfare (Ken Hsu, Willy Hsu, Micheal Lu). At first gunpowder was used to blast rocks apart and to make fireworks, later to be used as warfare. To medieval Chinese it was simply an aid to esthetic pleasure.

By the 10th century, gunpowder began to be used for military purposes in China in the form of rockets and explosive bombs fired from catapults. The first reference to cannon appears in 1126 when oil bamboo tubes were used to launch missiles at the enemy. Eventually bamboo tubes were replaced by metal tubes, and the oldest cannon in China dates from 1290. From China, the military use of gunpowder appears to have spread to Japan and Europe. It was used by the Mongols against the Hungarians in 1241 and was mentioned by Roger Bacon in 1248.

By the mid 14th century, early cannons are mentioned extensively both in Europe and in China. (Jack Kelly). In China as in Europe, the use of gunpowder to produce firearms and cannons was delayed by difficulties in creating metal tubes that would contain an explosion. This problem may have led to the false myth that the Chinese used their invention only for the manufacture of fireworks. In fact, gunpowder powered cannons and rockets were extensively used in the Mongol conquests of the 13th century and were a feature of East Asian warfare afterwards.

The short squat and thick city walls of Beijing for example, were specifically designed to withstand an artillery attack, and the Ming dynasty moved the capital from Nanjing to Beijing specifically because the hills around Nanjing were good locations for invaders to place artillery. (Jack Kelly). I believe Paper was the greatest invention of all Chinese inventions, even greater than gunpowder. Chinese legend tells that the new invention of paper was presented to the Emperor in the year 105 AD by Cai Lun (Franklin Institute).

In 105 AD, Han Emperor Ho-Ti’s chief eunuch T’sai Lun tried with a wide variety of materials and worked with the fiber of plants until each filament was completely separate. The individual fibers were mixed with water in a large vat. Next, a screen was submerged in the vat and lifted up through the water, catching the fibers on its surface. When dried, this thin layer of intertwined fiber became what today we call paper. T’sai Lun’s thin, yet flexible and strong paper with its fine, smooth surface was known as T’sai Ko-Shi, meaning: “Distinguished T’sai’s Paper” and he became revered as the saint of papermaking.

It wasn’t until the third century when the secret art of papermaking began to get out of China, first to Vietnam and then Tibet. Taught by Chinese papermakers, Tibetans began to make their own paper as a replacement for their traditional writing materials (Georgia Tech). It was introduced in Korea in the forth century and spread to Japan in sixth century. There, during the eighth century, the Empress Shotuka undertook a massive project consisting of printing a million prayers – Dharani – on individual sheets of paper, with each mounted in its own pagoda.

Papermaking spread slowly throughout Asia to Nepal and later to India. It made its true push westward in 751AD when the Tang Dynasty was at war with the Islamic world. The first recorded use of paper in Samarkand dates from a battle in Turkestan, where skilled Chinese artisans were taken prisoner and forced to make paper for their captors (Georgia Tech). They spirited them away to Samarkand, which soon became a great center for paper production. Gradually papermakers made their way further west through the Muslim world – to Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo.

Finally, when the Moors from North Africa invaded Spain and Portugal they brought the technology with them and so it was that papermaking entered Europe in the 12th century. Although there are many things that affect the quality of a paper, papermaking in essence is a simple process. Whether using recycled materials or fresh organic matter, the process starts by shredding the material into small strips and soaking them overnight to loosen the fibers. Next, the fibers are boiled for 2-6 hours, being turned every so often.

When finished, the fibers are washed with fresh water to remove impurities and then small particles or specks are removed by hand. The fibers are beaten in a blender or by hand to a creamy pulp. At this stage, dyes can be added to create colored papers. The pulp is poured into a large tub and the fibers are suspended in the water. The artisan dips a framed screen into the water and with great skill, lifts it to the surface catching the fibers onto the screen. The screens can be left in the sun to dry, or be transferred to boards, pressed, smoothed and then dried.

It wasn’t until the invention of paper that information could be recorded and passed on cheaply and in greater quantity (Paper Trading International). Over the many years of experimenting it has paid off for the Chinese. I researched two great masterpieces from it. But there were many more inventions, like the compass, medicine, printing, embroidery and silk. When trying to find the secret to immortality they made gunpowder with a bang! When getting bored trying to make something to send messages on they made the great paper. Both of these inventions are still used this very day, maybe it will be used for a lot more in years to come.

Two years after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, it became apparent to many of China’s leaders that economic reform was necessary. During his tenure as China’s premier, Mao had encouraged social movements such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution which had had as their bases ideologies such as serving the people and maintaining the class struggle. By 1978 “Chinese leaders were searching for a solution to serious economic problems produced by Hua Guofeng, the man who had succeeded Mao Zedong as CCP leader after Mao’s death” (Shirk 35).

Hua had demonstrated a desire to continue the ideologically based movements of Mao. Unfortunately, these movements had left China in a state where “agriculture was stagnant, industrial production was low, and the people’s living standards had not increased in twenty years” (Nathan 200). This last area was particularly troubling. While “the gross output value of industry and agriculture increased by 810 percent and national income grew by 420 percent [between 1952 and 1980] … average individual income increased by only 100 percent” (Ma Hong quoted in Shirk 28).

However, attempts at economic reform in China were introduced not only due to some kind of generosity on the part f the Chinese Communist Party to increase the populace’s living standards. It had become clear to members of the CCP that economic reform would fulfill a political purpose as well since the party felt, properly it would seem, that it had suffered a loss of support. As Susan L. Shirk describes the situation in The Political Logic of Economic Reform in China, restoring the CCP’s prestige required improving economic performance and raising living standards.

The traumatic experience of the Cultural Revolution had eroded popular trust in the moral and political virtue of the CCP. The party’s leaders decided to hift the base of party legitimacy from virtue to competence, and to do that they had to demonstrate This movement “from virtue to competence” seemed to mark a serious departure from orthodox Chinese political theory. Confucius himself had posited in the fifth century BCE that those individuals who best demonstrated what he referred to as moral force should lead the nation.

Using this principle as a guide, China had for centuries attempted to choose at least its bureaucratic leaders by administering a test to determine their moral force. After the Communist takeover of the country, Mao continued this emphasis on moral force by demanding that Chinese citizens demonstrate what he referred to as “correct consciousness. ” This correct consciousness could be exhibited, Mao believed, by the way people lived. Needless to say, that which constituted correct consciousness was often determined and assessed by Mao. Nevertheless, the ideal of moral force was still a potent one in China even after the Communist takeover.

It is noteworthy that Shirk feels that the Chinese Communist Party leaders saw economic reform as a way to regain their and their party’s moral virtue even after Mao’s death. Thus, paradoxically, by demonstrating their expertise in a more practical area of competence, the leaders of the CCP felt they could demonstrate how they were serving the people. To be sure, the move toward economic reform came about as a result of a “changed domestic and international environment, which altered the leadership’s perception of the factors that affect China’s national security and social stability” (Xu 247).

But Shirk feels that, in those pre-Tienenmen days, such a move came about also as a result of an attempt by CCP leaders to demonstrate, in a more practical and thus less obviously deological manner than Mao had done, their moral force. This is not to say that the idea of economic reform was embraced enthusiastically by all members of the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party in 1978. To a great extent, the issue of economic reform became politicized as the issue was used as a means by Deng Xiaoping to attain the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.

Mao’s successor, Hua Guofeng, had “tried to prove himself a worthy successor to Mao by draping himself in the mantle of Maoist tradition. His approach to economic development was orthodox Maoism with an up-to-date, international twist” Shirk 35). This approach was tied heavily to the development of China’s oil reserves. “[W]hen [in 1978] estimates of the oil reserves were revised downward[,] commitments to import plants and expand heavy industry could not be sustained” (Shirk 35).

Deng took advantage of this economic crisis to discredit Hua and aim for leadership of the party. “Reform policies became Deng’s platform against Hua for post-Mao leadership” (Shirk 36). Given this history of economic reform, it is evident that “under the present system economic questions are necessarily political questions” (Dorn 43). Once Deng and his faction had prevailed, it was necessary for some sort of economic reform to evolve. The initial form the new economy took was not a radical one.

China was “still a state in which the central government retain[ed] the dominant power in economic resource allocation and responsible local officials work[ed] for the interest of the units under their control” (Solinger 103). However, as time passed, some basic aspects of the old system were altered either by design or via the process of what might be called benign neglect. As Shirk points out, in rural areas, decollectivization was occurring: “decision making power [was being ransferred] from collective production units (communes, brigades, and teams) to the family” (38); purchase prices for major farm products were increased (39).

In 1985, further reforms were introduced. For example, long-term sales contracts between farmers and the government were established. In addition, in an effort to allow the market to determine prices, “city prices of fruit and vegetables, fish, meat, and eggs, were freed from government controls so they could respond to market demand” (Shirk 39). Most importantly, “a surge of private and collective industry and commerce in the countryside” (Shirk 39) occurred.

This allowed a great ercentage of the populace to become involved in private enterprise and investment in family or group ventures. The conditions also allowed rural Chinese to leave the villages and become involved in industry in urban centers (Shirk 40). The economy grew so quickly that inflation occurred and the government had to reinstitute price controls. China’s economy retains these characteristics of potential for growth–and inflation–to Another important aspect of Chinese economic reform was the decision of China to join the world economy.

Deng Xiaoping and his allies hoped to effect this 1979 resolution in two ways: by expanding foreign rade, and by encouraging foreign companies to invest in Chinese enterprises. This policy–denoted the “Open Policy” (Shirk 47)–was a drastic removal from the policies of Mao Zedong and, in fact, from centuries of Chinese political culture. The Open Policy, which designated limited areas in China “as places with preferential conditions for foreign investment and bases for the development of exports” (Nathan 99), was extremely successful in the areas where it was implemented (Shirk 47).

However, it was looked upon by many Chinese as nothing less than an avenue to “economic dependency” (Nathan 50). Indeed, when the policy was first many Chinese seem[ed] to fear that Deng’s policies [were] drawing China back toward its former semi-colonial status as a “market where the imperialist countries dump their goods, a raw material base, a repair and assembly workshop, It is interesting to note the symptoms of a national character that would subscribe to the above sentiment.

In an article written in 1981, just two years after the Open Policy was first proposed, Andrew J. Nathan noted the almost pathological resistance to foreign intervention in the Chinese economy: “Some Chinese fear that reliance on imported echnology will encourage a dependent psychology … [Many] Chinese perceive joint ventures as a costly form of acquisition. ‘Some people worry: Won’t we be suffering losses by letting foreigners make profits in our country? ‘” (52). The Chinese were as vociferous about issues of sovereignty.

Nathan maintained that the Mao-led revolution, which culminated in victory in 1949, had been fueled by “an intense patriotism: … once China had ‘stood up,’ no infringement on its sovereignty, no matter how small, should be permitted” (53). These feelings were manifested in denying foreign businessmen long-term, multiple entry visas, esisting “increased foreign economic contacts” and alteration of current ways of doing things, and disinclination to become involved in government-to-government loans and joint ventures lest Chinese become exploited in some way (Nathan 53-55).

Given these hesitancies on the part of the Chinese society vis-a-vis foreign relations, it is impressive that Deng and his allies were able initially to create and implement the Open Policy since many members of the society at large were resistant to becoming involved in a policy so antithetical to the Chinese national character. However, once the successes of the Open Policy were apparent, esistance to the plan by the populace waned.

Moreover, given the confluence of politics and economics in China, it seems apparent that some members of the CCP would also not be in favor of the plan. Nevertheless, the Open Policy was implemented and has become instrumental in the success The implementation of the Open Policy was so successful that by 1988 the leaders of the CCP were encouraged to create a new program called the “coastal development strategy. ” In this program, even more of the country was opened up to foreign investment–an area which, at the time, included nearly 200 million people.

Moreover, by involving more overseas investors, “importing both capital and raw materials,” and “exporting China’s cheap excess labor power,” the new policy was one of “‘export-led growth’ or ‘export-oriented industrialization. ‘ It [was] explicitly modeled on the experiences of Taiwan and the other Asian ‘small dragons'” One analyst has maintained that “China now stands at the threshold of the greatest opportunity in human history: a new economic era promising greater wealth and achievement than any previous epoch” (Gilder 369).

Illustrative of this optimistic feeling is Shanghai, an area that as designated for preferential conditions for foreign investment and as a base for the development of exports in 1988. This city and environs in the Yangtze Delta area have a population of approximately 400 million people and the city has become the nation’s financial hub for international and national investors. For political reasons, this area was excluded from the original Open Policy designation in 1978, but is currently in the process of catching up with other areas so designated.

Indeed, the increase in foreign investments in the last two years is striking. The area received 3. billion dollars in foreign investments during the 1980s. The area received the same amount from foreign investments in 1992 alone. In only the first ten months of 1993, the area had received over six billion dollars worth of foreign investments (Tyler A8). Western analysts have asserted that the Open Policy and the coastal development strategy have allowed Deng to entrench his political power (Shirk 47) and will allow his power to be sustained even after death. If this is true, Deng should be very popular in Shanghai.

With its new designation, and with the billions of foreign dollars coming into the area, t has become necessary to improve the city’s facilities. To that end forty billion dollars worth of public works projects have been allocated by the central government for Shanghai within the last year (Tyler A1). These public works projects include new sewers, a new water system, new gas lines, a new bridge, and extensive roadwork. Future plans include the construction of a second international airport, a container port, a new subway system, and more roads and bridges (Tyler A8).

The financial district, which will feature a new stock exchange, is also being rebuilt by China and foreign investors in a joint venture. By being designated for preferential conditions, Shanghai received from the central government tax exemptions for enterprises doing business with foreign companies, tax holidays for new factories set up with foreign investments, and a bonded zone–the largest in China–for duty free imports of raw materials. Shanghai now has all the trappings of a modern city: discos, construction projects, and conspicuous consumption.

In short, where “revered monuments and golden arches exist side by side” (Riboud 12), the appearance of the new Shanghai does nothing less than signal “the end of the ideological ebate over China’s free market experiments” (Tyler A8). Shanghai has joined the ranks of the modern metropolis. However, this is not necessarily a beneficial development. Inflation is rampant: prices have doubled in the industrial zones in the last five years. Nevertheless, the fact that Shanghai currently possesses the fifth most expensive office space in the world demonstrates that demand is high and that the prospects for future growth are promising (Tyler A8).

Indeed, Pudong, a free export manufacturing zone described as “the future sight of Shanghai’s Manhattan” (Tyler A8), boasts more than twenty factories built r being built with names like Siemens and Hitachi prominent. This area has become particularly attractive to foreign investors and companies because of its tax concessions, duty free imports of raw materials, and cheap labor. Shanghai stands to benefit, too, as it receives ancillary technology and discretionary spending from the workers and executives of the companies represented (Tyler A8).

It is conditions like these that have caused at least one analyst to predict that China will be “the richest economy in the world within the next 25 years” (Gilder 372). Shanghai is by no means unique to this growth. Additional oreign investments have continued to pour into other areas of China. For example, the Boeing Company recently announced its intention to “invest $100 million in a plant in [Xian] China to make tail sections for 737 jetliners” (“Boeing” D4). In addition, E. I. du Pont recently predicted “that its investments and business in China could increase as much as ten times by the end of the century” (“Du Pont” D2).

Tellingly, du Pont’s chairman attributed the company’s negotiations of “as many as 28 new projects in China” to the fact “that the country’s financial changes, improved infrastructure and rising disposable income has [sic] encouraged he company to expand its business activities” (“Du Pont” D2). The Chinese government has made conscientious attempts to promote the strength of the country’s economy while protecting its citizens. Just a few weeks ago, the government instituted “tight-money policies, intended to control inflation and slow what has been the world’s fastest growing major economy” (Shenon “China Halts” D1).

However, after doing so, China’s Securities Regulatory Commission was forced to stop the issuing of new issues on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges because the value of the markets had decreased so greatly. This latter move was “meant to calm millions of first-time Chinese investors who evidently went into the market believing that stock prices could only go up” (Shenon “China Halts” D1). Might this policy show a union of economic and moral concern? If so, it demonstrates the desire on the part of the government to show some kind of responsibility, some moral force, to its citizenry.

At the very least, the strategy appears to show a practical desire on the part of the government to take control over what could have been a bad economic situation. Indeed, after these measures were instituted, China’s rade deficit decreased (Hansell D2) and the stock markets’ volume attained record highs (“Stocks Surge” D2). To be sure, Chinese investors remain somewhat wary about the stock market and, ironically enough, more control of the stock markets appears to be necessary (Shenon “A Nail-Biting” D1).

But, in discussing Chinese attempts to control inflation, Philip J. Suttle, head of emerging markets research at the investment firm of J. P. Morgan, has predicted that “[i]t looks as though the Chinese are going to have the soft landing they are aiming for” (quoted in Hansell D2). China’s interest in stock markets is no longer restricted to ithin its own boundaries. This month, Shandong Huaneng Power Development Company, “the first mainland Chinese company to have its primary listing on the New York Stock Exchange” (“China Stock” D5), began trading shares.

The stock should be an attractive one to investors: Chinese electrical “demand … is expected to grow by a whopping 17 million kilowatts a year until the turn of the century” (Zuckerman D6). Moreover, China stands to gain from the issue’s sales. “The company plans to use the $311 million dollars it received from the offering to retire $83 million in loans from … Chinese state entities. It also plans to expand its overall generating capacity” (Zuckerman D6). Nor does this signify the only Chinese attempt of raising capital from foreign sources on foreign soil.

Three more power companies are expected to be listed in New York and Hong Kong in the coming months” Given the apparent strength of the Chinese economy as shown by huge public works projects, extensive foreign investments, participation in the world economy, and a generally higher standard of living by the populace, it would appear that China is now ready to join the world as a modern capitalistic and democratic society. However, this is not quite the ase. The CCP retains vestiges of those characteristics of insularity and intransigence as discussed by Nathan.

Because of its human rights record, the country’s economic growth is being impeded. That is, the politics of China, which have always been allied with its economics, are now The United States, especially, has been concerned with China’s treatment of political dissidents. In May, President Clinton decided to end linking China’s trade status with the United States with its record on human rights.

The president has been criticized for this because of situations like the following: trials for “‘counterrevolutionary ctivities’ [including] … lans to use a remote-controlled airplane to drop pro-democracy leaflets over … Tienenmen Square” (“China cracks” A13) have recently begun for fifteen dissidents and labor organizers who were involved in the Tienenmen Square protests. These trials have “been delayed twice, first to avoid negative international reaction just before the decision last September on China’s failed bid to host the 2000 Olympics and then this spring to avoid influencing Clinton’s trade decision” (“China cracks” A13).

In addition, China has instituted “new laws effective in June [which] give sweeping powers to China’s State Security Bureau to clamp down on dissidents” (“China cracks” A13). China is fully aware of United States’ concerns about its human rights record. Given the fact that the United States has made it clear to China that that record will be allied with trade status, China’s timing of such restrictive activities has caused United States legislators and administrators to question China’s sincerity in its desire to have a favored trade status with the United States.

Indeed, just in the past few days, it took a last-minute lobbying campaign by President Clinton nd his Cabinet [to head off a] potentially embarrassing vote by the House of Representatives to restrict trade with China as a way to punish Beijing for reported human rights violations. But China’s problems in joining the community of the world market have more to do than with its political ethos and practices. China appears not to understand or to be able to follow through on fundamental modern economic practices.

For example, the United States has recently complained that “China has not complied with international rules on access to its markets and protection of copyrights and patents” (Gargan 14). Such non-compliance could make it difficult for China to become a founding World Trade Organization, the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the body that is intended to promote global free trade by lowering tariffs and other barriers, [which] will be formally constituted on January 1, 1994.

The specific nature of the United States’ complaint has to do with China’s pirating of musical compact disks, video laser disks and computer software. In fact, it is estimated that such pirating costs American companies a billion dollars a year. This phenomenon seems to have to do with the Chinese psychology as described by Nathan. In his 1981 essay he noted that China did not wish to become a “technological client of the west. The preferred solution is to buy one item and copy it” (Nathan 52). Clearly, this is not the way trade works today.

It is the United States’ position that China must adhere to the rules of trade before it can be included in a trade organization. Needless to say, exclusion from WTO would be disastrous for any country, but particularly for an emerging market such as Even on a day to day basis, China’s economic leaders seem unable to understand how some aspects of a market economy work. In discussing the status of the Shanghai Stock Market, for example, one stock dealer referred to it as “crazy” (“Stocks Surge” D2). Moreover, American analysts have been amazed to discover in the Shanghai market “the lack of regulation and the poor disclosure requirements.

Some companies have been listed for two or three years and have not issued an annual report” (Hansell D2). It is no wonder that Chinese investors become anxious about The issuance of shares in the Shandong Huaneng Power Development Company also demonstrates the lack of expertise on the part of the Chinese in the modern world market. In fact, according to one Hong Kong investment analyst, “‘[t]he company wasn’t really a company. It was just a bunch of discrete plants that they tied a bow around and wrote a prospectus on'” (Zuckerman D6). The prospectus guaranteed a fifteen percent annual return on investments.

In fact, the return will no doubt be less than that because of prevailing currency exchange rates and debt that To be sure, the problems of the Shandong Huaneng Power Development Company and the Shanghai Stock Exchange may demonstrate only the problems of an immature economy. Nevertheless, if China wishes to ecome a viable member of the world economic community, such shortcomings These apparent problems may also be the result of an economic system that is run by the state. Certainly, one thing that the CCP has attempted to do is create a market economy while retaining a state controlled system.

This structure may be possible but it does have its critics. Steven N. S. Cheung, in an essay written in 1989, argued for the “creation of private property by mandate” (31), feeling that privatization in China would lead to necessary additional investment in the society’s infrastructure and the establishment of a “judicial system that is based irmly on the principle of equality before the law” (Cheung 32). Echoing Cheung’s sentiments, James Dorn saw problems in the areas of Chinese banking and finance. In this arrangement, Dorn argued, “the state controls the bulk of investment resources.

The lack of a private capital market has handicapped economic development in China and hampered rational investment decisionmaking” (43). In order to become a modern economic state Dorn argued for the necessity of circumventing “China’s ruling elite who oppose the dismantling of state monopolies and who benefit from price fixing and nonprice rationing” (51). Xu Zhiming also saw the necessity for a revamping of the Chinese system: “We must throw off the traditional system completely” (249) in order for economic reform to thrive. Communist Party members, of course, articulate a different position.

In a recent interview that appeared in the Beijing Review, Feng Bing, Deputy Secretary General of the State Commission for Restructuring the Economic System, spoke to the issue of economic reform in China. It is striking that Feng spoke of the benefits that the populace has received as a result of the economic reform now occurring in China. That is, his omments appeared to demonstrate the beneficence, or the moral force, of the Chinese Communist Party vis-a-vis economic reform.

He noted that such reform involves the essence of socialism: “to liberate and develop productive forces; to eradicate exploitation; to remove polarization; and … o attain the goal of common prosperity” (“Official” 12). Thus, CCP leaders still appear to see their roles as representatives of a moral force. CCP members and leaders wish economic reform not to be judged on just its practical merits, but also as an effect of the moral force of the leadership. Economic reform, then, becomes nothing less than a moral crusade and it is thus easy to see why, for example, China “has staked its national prestige on becoming a founding member of the World Trade Will China succeed in taking its place among the nations of the world market?

Will the CCP succeed in retaining its political power given the drastic changes in the societal makeup of China that are occurring due to the changing economic realities? I would suggest that the chances are better for the former than for the latter. Once the Chinese attain more sophistication relative to international and national markets, institute a ore manageable banking system, and make a good faith effort to insure acceptable human rights, the country may well become “the richest economy in the world within the next 25 years” (Gilder 372).

However, whether or not these conditions can occur without a weakening of the state controlled system is problematic. The most impressive and far-reaching display of moral force by the CCP may well have to be a voluntary reduction of its power over the people. Paradoxically, by weakening itself politically, the party may demonstrate its true moral force by liberating, politically and economically, one billion Chinese citizens.

What is the debate on weather or not China should retain favored-nation trading status all about? Is it really a decision on what is best economically for the United States, and China. Or is it: the issue of Chinese human rights violations and the fact that if the United States where to revoke the favored nation status of China it would have a profound negative impact on the U. S. economy alone. (+)Most-favored-nation trade status started in the United States as a version of the European preferential trade system.

The Carter Administration first granted most-favored-nation trading status to China in 1980, following the historic efforts of President Nixon during the 1970’s to restore diplomatic ties. Historically, a significant difference existed between the unconditional most-favored-nation clause in European trade law and the American version of conditional most-favored-nation. Under unconditional most-favored-nation status, one country’s extension of tariff concessions guarantees the same concessions to all nations associated with it through commercial treaties.

American conditional most-favored-nation status provided treaty signatories only the opportunity to negotiate most-favored-nation status when most-favored-nation status was extended to another trading partner. Thus meaning that the United States gives significant economic advantages to one nation in the form of most-favored-nation trading status. Under the Trade Act of 1974, most-favored-nation status could only be granted to China through a Sino-American bilateral commercial agreement and satisfaction of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment requirements.

The Jackson-Vanik amendment states that the President of the United States may grant a communist country such as China most-favored-nation trade status if it was in conjunction with a trade agreement and upon proper improvement that China would permit emigration. Also China would have to satisfy that they are moving toward improving current policies. The conclusion of the US-PRC commercial accord in July 1979, and the initial waiving of the Jackson-Vanik requirements, and with Congressional approval, most-favored-nation status was granted to China.

This action sealed the successful efforts of the Carter Administration to create social and economic ties through Sino-American relations. The renewal of China’s most-favored-nation trade status has been supported by Chinese liberalization of its own emigration policies. Six hundred and twenty-five thousand Chinese citizens traveled abroad in 1990. The Chinese government in 1990 issued 280,000 new passports. During the same year, the United States issued seventeen thousand immigrant visas through consular offices in China, the full number allowed by American immigration law.

The principal restraint to Chinese emigration has arisen not from Chinese emigration policies but from the unwillingness of other countries to accept immigrants. Most-favored-nation status for China continues to provide an incentive for further advancement in this area as well as facilitating the contacts that the Carter administration established well over a decade ago. By granting China most-favored-nation trade status the United States has started that long and difficult process of bringing China out of its international dark ages.

In order to live up to the terms of most-favored-nation trade status China has had to become more open to social and economic changes. These reforms included more economic freedom, easier access for foreign direct investments. The economic developments these reforms have been to a main cause for China’s newly increased gross nation product. Over a ten-year period from 1978 to 1988 most-favored-nation trade status was directly responsible for an annual ten percent growth in China’s gross national product. China will likely prove to be a significant market for the U. S. in the future.

China is one of the world’s fastest growing economies, and with its efforts to reform, improve, and modernize its economy could come a significant increase in demand for imports. Infrastructure development, in particular, has been made a major priority, and the Chinese government has also announced that foreign firms will be allowed to participate in a wide variety of projects. This is very important to the United States because it mean that there is for the foreseeable future a market for their goods and services in China.

Also as a result of the most-favored-nation trade status that China currently holds it makes the opportunity for international business ventures there even that much interesting because of the possibility of high profits. Another advantage for the United States is in the area of imports from China. The surge in United States imports of Chinese products over the past few years can be largely explained by two factors. First, China’s production of low-cost, highly labor-intensive products has grown greatly in recent years.

A main reason for this is that the price that which the Chinese are able to produce goods is at a lower level than almost any other producer. In addition the United States demand for product of this type has and mostly likely will continue to rise in the future. In response Taiwan and Hong Kong have moved many of their production firms into China to take advantage of lower labor costs. This is good for the economy of China and it also helps to supply the United States with low cost goods. (=)The growing U. S. trade imbalance with China, and the exclusive market segments of China’s trade regime have become of major concern to many U. S. policymakers.

Over the past few years, the U. S. trade deficit with China has surged. It rose to nearly 50 billion in 1997 and could top or exceed 60 billion in 1998. China’s trade policies have become a focal point in the annual congressional debate over renewing China’s most-favored-nation trade status. Along with other non-trade issues, including but not limited to human rights violations, weapons sales, and foreign policy issues. Over the past several years, efforts have been made in Congress to terminate, or attach additional conditions to, China’s most-favored-nation trade status, although none have as of yet succeeded.

This policy was opposed by the Bush Administration, which sought to deal with these issues outside the most-favored-nation trade status process. As a result, President Bush vetoed congressional attempts to revoke or condition China’s most-favored-nation trade status, and such vetoes were consistently sustained in the Senate. As a presidential candidate, Bill Clinton criticized the Bush Administration’s China policy and pledged to take a tougher approach to United States-Chinese trade relations, including conditioning China’s most-favored-nation trade status renewal.

To date many of the very same issues that the United State objected to in the past are still going on every day in China. From the American political viewpoint it would seem only right to continue to renew China’s most-favored-nation trade status. Politicians are concerned about is whether or not the United States economy is strong and if it is not, then finding something that they can do to make it that the economy is getting better. So most of the world turns a blind eye to many of the issues that China is currently having and just disregards them.

This meaning that if there were any human rights violations or other types of acts that violated the pact that China signed to earn most-favored-nation trade status, then the United States have a responsibility. A responsibility to do whatever it can as the United States to ease and or end any of the suffering or unfair hardship that the people of China are currently experiencing. It is our duty as human beings to ensure that a high global standard of living. This should be the bottom line.

Because the way that it seems now, the United States is much more concerned about getting inexpensive goods from China and being able to help China update its infrastructure. The question that has to be asked annually when a vote about China’s most-favored-nation trade status comes up is that if it is all right for China to do the things that they do. If we decide that China’s violations of their most-favored-nation trade status are not forgivable then the United States need to cut its economic ties with China.

Decisions like these would be very difficult for the economies of both nations, but it comes down to the fact that money is not the most import thing. Other values have to be placed before the interest of making as much money as possible. (-) Other concerns about future dealings with China have also arisen. The United States has voiced its concerns in recent about China’s missile and nuclear proliferation activities. These concerns led the United States to limit United States exports to China of supercomputers, satellites and parts, and missile technology.

Why is our most favored trading partner-stockpiling weapons? For what reason is China moving nuclear related materials and technology to Pakistan? Needless to say these were some very unsettling events that took place in the early months of 1996. Actions likes these could very well be reason alone for China to lose its most-favored-nation trade status. But yet they were allowed to keep it. The United States Customs Service has found evidence on multiple occasions that China has attempted to circumvent or otherwise break United States textile quotas laws.

This was done by transshipping Chinese products through other countries to the United States by the use of false country of origin labels. Another method was the misclassification of textile and apparel products. The United States Customs Service estimates that such transshipments and other circumvention methods may total up to two billion dollars each year. In addition, the United States has charged that certain Chinese entities have sought to avoid United States tariffs by undervaluing textile and apparel shipments

On January 6,1994, the United States announced that a large reduction of 25-35% below the 1993 level of China’s textile and apparel quota would result due to China’s refusal to accept anti-circumvention provisions in a new textile agreement. The new quota levels were set to take effect on January 17, 1994. However, on that date, the United States and China came up with a new textile agreement that would effectively reduce the growth rate of China’s textile exports to the United States by allowing United States to significantly reduce China’s quotas if China violates the agreement through transshipments.

Charges by the United States Customs Service of illegal transshipments by China have led the United States on separate occasions since the signing of the agreement to reduce China’s textile and apparel quotas on specific products. The most recent incident occurred on September 6, 1996, when the U. S. T. R. announced that the United States would impose a $19 million dollar punitive charge against China’s 1996 textile quota allowance due to China’s repeated violations of the United States-China textile agreement dealing with illegal transshipments.

China in turn has threatened to fight back by imposing restrictions on the importation of certain United States products. I can only begin to imagine the great cost that it takes on a yearly basis to keep a watchful eye on the export practices of the Chinese textile and apparel industries. As if the problem of Chinese textile and apparel exports were not bad enough already there is information that would led to cast an even darker shadow on this portion of the Chinese economy. It is believed the use of forced labor is widespread and a long-standing and accepted practice in many parts of China.

Evidence leads us to believe that China might be using forced labor on a large scale in hopes to increase its exports, and a significant number of these products may be for the United States. I have a problem with making people work against their will. I just think that it is just another form of slavery, and at all cost the United States should try to limit its dealing with nation who use economic practices that involve forced labor of any kind. Another problem with the Chinese exporting goods that may be produced in a forced labor environment is that it not legal.

United States law prohibits importing goods or other commodities from any country produced through the use of forced labor, although getting actual proof of violations for certain imported goods is and will remain to be a very large challenge. In 1994 despite supposed violation, China’s most-favored-nation trade status was renewed. The renewal of China’s most-favored-nation trade status came with the ideal in mind that China would follow the guidelines on the use of prison labor that it had agreed to two years before.

In 1996 it was said that the progress that China had made in reducing the exports produced by prison labor export was good enough to warrant the renewal of most-favored-nation trade status. Only two years later the United States Customs Service confirmed that an iron firm in China had been using prison labor and then illegally exporting their product to the United States. As a result the United States Customs Service placed a important restriction on all product from that iron.

So what does this mean? As I have shown cases where China does not follow rules that are to govern its most-favored-nation trade status, nothing more than a fine or non-acceptance of their product ever happens. I cannot say that I really see the point of the United States having some of the laws that it does. Laws are written and then when they are broken they are not enforced to the severity to which they were broken. China is being treated like it has unconditional trade status.

As of the last time I checked China has most-favored-nation trade status that is still very much conditional on many things. And it would appear that on more than one occasion the United States has caught China breaking laws, rules, or other governing factors that should at least result in some type of economic sanctions. But what happens is that every time that China’s most-favored-nation trade status comes up for vote they campaign really hard to convince us that they are really work to try to improve the condition of their nation.

So what ends up taking place is that when the United States tries to follow through with China’s punishment for doing something wrong they then make threats to turn it all around and counter attack us. We try to enforce agreement that they have signed and we end up in an economic power play. To solve this one of several things needs to happen. First, just accept the fact they were caught trying to sneak around United States Customs laws and take the according penalty. Second, the United States must sticks to the agreement and pacts that it has made with China.

When a violation is committed the United States just does what it should do by fining or posing other such penalties for that said action, and it does not worry about the possibility of counter threat from China. Third, would be to just step back from a crack down of Chinese infractions and rework our foreign trade status policies. In particular, Congress would have to reword or void Title IV of the Trade Act of 1974, commonly known as the Jackson-Vanik Amendment. Which prohibits the President of the United States from granting most-favored-nation trade status to China on a permanent, unconditional basis.

Heck, since the United States has not cared enough to pull most-favored-nation trade status from China why not grant unconditional trade status to the People Republic. I do not know which of the three above ideas is the best, but I do have a very interesting thought about the first one. If the United States is going to stand by and let China break the agreement that we have set then what is the point of having these rules or laws in the first place? If we can accept the fact that China is breaking our laws then we can also understand that this behavior can very well lead to a state of anarchy and lawlessness.

These are all things that are breed by a lack of law, and also facilitated by a lack of proper enforcement of our current laws. This is a warning also for the future as we show China that the United States will not stand for the flagrant breaking of its laws. United States policymakers employ economic sanctions not only to equalize trade and investment disputes, but also to reach non-economic policy objectives. This has been especially true with respect to China. Currently, the United States imposes the following economic sanctions on China.

Restrictions on export licenses are things that the United States may deny if it was determined that the product could make a direct and significant contribution to the development of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems, electronic and submarine warfare, intelligence gathering, nuclear power projection, and air superiority. This restriction was placed on China on November 23, 1984. Another restriction placed on China dealt with the withholding of generalized system of preferences status.

Section 502(b)(1) of the Trade Act of 1974 prevents the President of the United States from designating any developing country as “dominated or controlled by international communism” as a beneficiary of tariff reductions under this program. This restriction took place on January 1, 1976. Section 902 of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act for Fiscal Years 1990 and 1991 deals with the suspension of nuclear trade and cooperation with China. This sanction was set on February 16, 1990 and may be lifted if the President determines that China is making political reforms that reduce oppression of the people of Tibet.

On June 5, 1989 President Bush suspended government-to-government and commercial arms sales to China. Also in June of nineteen eighty-nine President Bush directed the United States directors at the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank to seek postponement of new multilateral development bank loans to China. The Suspension of Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) and Trade and Development Agency (TDA) activities took place on February sixteenth nineteen-ninety.

Section 902 of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act for fiscal year 1990 and 1991 expressed suspension of first the granting of O. P. I. C. insurance, reinsurance, financing, or guarantees to China and second the obligating of T. D. A. funds for new projects in China. This sanction is not unlike many others placed against China, in that it may be lifted if the President of the United States determines that China is making political reforms in Tibet. In addition Section 902 of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act for Fiscal Years 1990 and 1991 talks about the prohibition of the export of items on the Munitions Control List, and of United States satellites.

This sanction placed in February of 1990 can be lifted if political conditions improve between China and Tibet. Another restriction placed on China by the United States on February 16, 1990 dealt with the prohibition of export licenses for crime control and detection equipment. This is among the long list of restriction placed against China in the fiscal year of 1990 in hopes to get China to change it political attitude towards Tibet. Again there is more mention of restriction against certain imports produced by prison labor.

The Customs Bureau has enforced Section 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930, which forbids imports made by forced of prison labor goods. Examples pf such forced labor are diesel engines manufactured by the Golden Horse Diesel Engine Factory, March twenty-third nineteen ninety-two; tea grown by the Red Star Tea Farm, July thirteenth nineteen ninety-two; sheepskin and leather processed by the Qinghai Hide and Garment Factory, July thirteenth nineteen ninety-two; and again iron pipe fittings manufactured by the Tianjin Malleable Iron Factory, April 29, 1996.

On May 28, 1984, restrictions on the importation of Chinese munitions and ammunition. In conjunction with the 1994 annual renewal of China’s most-favored-nation trade status, United States President Clinton prohibited the importing of arms and ammunition from the Peoples Republic of China. These are only some of the many economic restriction that have been placed against the People’s Republic of China. Talk about a very complex system of checks and balances, used to keep the economic practices of China under control.

In Conclusion, it should now be obvious that the issues around China’s most-favored-nation trade status are both very complex and multi-dimensional. I have mearly tried to provide the issues on both sides of the debate that surrounds the China’s most-favored-nation status. By giving stats and other figures that show just how this issue has the ability to effect the economies of both the United States and China.

1. The Sung dynasty was considered a Golden Age in Chinese history. During this dynasty, the economy expanded and China became the leading economic force in East Asia. As the center of agriculture moved to rice crops in southern China, a new strain of rice and new irrigation techniques allowed the Chinese to harvest two crops of rice a year. This surplus allowed more people to pursue the arts, learning and trade.

Foreign trade increased with traders coming from far and wide to China. The Chinese built new types of ships that were better and their goods were traded to distant lands. Among these fine goods were porcelain items, which the Chinese perfected and was said to be the worlds best. To encourage trade, China released printed money. Chinas cities prospered as centers of trade and grew in population.

2. Under the Tang and Sung dynasties, China was basically split into two classes: the gentry and the peasantry. The Gentry were wealthy land owners and government officials. They were better educated than they were at physical labor. Officials in China had to pass rigorous civil service examinations. The great thinkers of the Sung dynasty revived old Confucian tradition and thought. Peasantry lived in small self-sufficient villages. They farmed the fields and did it well with better tools and techniques.

Some peasant families supplemented their income by making handicrafts such as baskets and embroidery which they took to trade at nearby markets for things they needed, such as salt and tea. It was possible for a peasant to rise through his or her social class and become part of the gentry. If a smart young peasant studied and passes a civil service exam, he and his whole family would move up in society. Merchants were considered lowlier than the peasants under the Sung dynastys Confucian ideas because they made money off of other peoples work. The peasants and artisans made the goods while they only sold them.

3. Women, during the Sung dynasty, had more rights and equality than they did at later times. The wife and mother-in-law of a family ran the family affairs, managing finances, servants and discipline. However, boys were valued more than girls, and when a girl married, she was to become totally part of her husbands family and could never remarry. To reinforce womens subordinate position, their feet were bound from an early age, deforming them as they grew, until they were shaped into lily-like hoof feet.

Women who had these hoof-feet were considered noble and beautiful, and desirable as wives. They wore tiny shoes that would look too us today as baby shoes with high sides. In the view of the Chinese men of the time, these feet were sexual signals, much as men in our culture might view legs. These tiny disfigured feet made women unable to leave the house without assistance, reinforcing the Confucian belief then women were not meant to do outdoor work.

In California, between 1850s to the Chinese Exclusion Act, most of the Chinese women who came to San Francisco were either slaves or indentured. They were often lured, kidnapped or purchased and forced to work as prostitutes at the brothels which is run by secret society of the Tongs of San Francisco. Chinese prostitutes also were smuggled and had worked at the Chinatown brothels in the Comstock Mines in Nevada. Chinese prostitutes were commonly known as prostitutes of the lowest order. Both outcast slatterns and Asian slaves stood at the edge of the irregular marketplace, far more socially stigmatized than ordinary prostitutes.

The demand for Chinese prostitutes in California was primarily due to the shortage of Chinese women and the prohibitions and taboo against sexual relations between Chinese men and White women. During the period of unrestricted Asian immigration from 1850 to 1882, more than 100,000 Chinese men but only 8,848 Chinese women entered the United States. The incredible sex ratio and the isolation of Chinese men from white communities generated nearly ideal demand conditions for prostitution, but white prostitutes rarely accepted Chinese customers.

The same merchants and members of protective associations who had arranged passages and jobs for male sojourners leaped into the breath, supplying Chinese prostitutes to their own immense profit. These secret Chinese Tongs based in San Francisco controlled Asian prostitution in San Francisco and in the mining towns such as Comstock, Nevada. The Hip Yee Tong, the secret society that reportedly started the prostitution trafficking in 1852. These organizations, the tongs, soon monopolized the control of viceprostitution, gambling and opium.

The Hip Yee Tong in 1852 was founded for the sole purpose of importing sing-song girls (prostitutes). The members enriched themselves at the expense of the girls and their customers. Chinese prostitutes were almost always imported as indentured servants or mui jai. The women were usually between the ages of 16 to 25. Mui jai were girls who had been sold into domestic service or labor by their poor parents. Their owners were expected to provide them with food and housing and to match them with husband when they become of age.

But some were sold by their masters in China for $70 to $150 and then resold in America for $350 to $1,000 or more. It was a wholesale and retail operation. Like the price of merchandise, the price of prostitutes fluctuated depending upon supply and demand. During the times of war and famine in Chines, when there was an increase in the sale of daughters, prices dropped. Prices rose in the United States whenever stringent laws were passed to suppress Chinese prostitution. An estimated 85 percent of the Chinese women in San Francisco were prostitutes in 1860, 71 percent in 1870, and 21 percent in 1880.

At the time of the Spanish-American war there were over 400 singsong girls in the Chinese Quarter. Yet they could not keep up with the city-wide demand for their services, much less fill the requirements of the State at large. The disreputable houses, together with gambling dens, constituted a firm economic base for the fighting tongs. Upon their arrival in San Francisco, these young Chinese women were taken to the barracoon, which were also known as the auction block or Queens Room, the barracoon was closed guarded room large enough to house fifty to one hundred women.

In the barracoon women, like livestock, were put on display for sale. They were stripped for inspection and sold to the highest bidder. They were forced to sign service contract, which only a few of them could read the terms, and thumbprinted. The contracts usually states that for the girl was indebted to her new master for passage from China, which cost about $500 to 700 in 1860-70s, she will serve as a prostitute for four to five years without wages.

The luckier girls were sold to well-to-do Chinese as concubines or mistresses or to the parlor houses to serve upper-class gentlemen. The lowest less-fortunate women were confined in cribs, rooms no larger than four-by-six feet, where they were forced to hawk their trade to poor laborers, teenage boys, sailors, and drunkards for as little as twenty-five to fifty cents. When hopelessly diseased, they were left alone to die in the hospital or were discarded in the streets. The trade was so lucrative along with gambling and opium. The tongs constantly fought for its control.

Sing-song girls were often kidnapped in broad daylight and hijacked from their cribs under the very noses of their masters, in order to be rushed inland to womenless agricultural or mining towns Chinatowns and work as prostitutes. The Tong members were often called Hatchet man because of the brutal things that they perform. The Hip Yee Tong was reportedly netted two hundred thousand dollars from the illegal traffic between 1852 and 1873. Violent tong wars in the 1870s and 1880s, sensationalized in the press, often began with disputes over possession of a Chines prostitute.

In 1875 two tongs went to battle after a Suey Sing Tong member was killed by a Kwong Dock Tong member over possession of Kum Ho, a prostitute. Ten men were killed in the street fight before the police intervened. In those days, there were no worse fate for a Chinese prostitute than to be banished to the mining camps, like the Comstock Mines in Nevada, where they led lives as harsh as they were short. In these isolated rural areas, conditions were even more worse and horrible than in urban brothels.

Living with their masters in the segregated Chinatowns that services miners, most prostitutes serve a racially mixed clientele of uncivil miners. They were called the prostitute of the lowest order. In these mining towns, separate Chinatowns sprang up because of racism and discriminatory city ordinance allowing any white citizens to petition to remove them. There were twenty Chinese prostitutes on the Comstock in 1880, while there had been seventy-five in 1875. The majority of prostitutes worked in public establishments in mining towns such as the Comstock.

Brothels were distinguished by both class and race, and the best Chinese brothels in San Francisco, and probably on the Comstock as well, catered only to Chinese, because Chinese men believed that the most degrading thing a Chinese woman could do was to have sexual intercourse with a white. High-Status Asian women often dressed in silks and jewels, as did other Chinese prostitutes who catered to whites with a taste for the exotic. By and large, however, Chinese prostitutes dressed in plain cotton and worked for fees ranging from twenty-five to fifty cents a customer.

In Comstock, Asian women were always segregated in Chinatown and none of them lived in brothels also housing whites. This segregation reflected the anti-Chines prejudice. In the system of stratification within prostitution Chinese prostitutes had lower status than any other group of women. A few Chinese immigrated to the Comstock as free-agent prostitutes or the concubines of rich Chinese, The majority were either indentured for about five years or were the lifetime slaves of brothel keepers with ties to the secret societies headquartered in San Francisco

The harsh life of a Chines prostitutes in the mining towns were commonly disrespected in the white communities there. The enslavement of Chinese women was common knowledge on the Lode, whites simply accepted. A newspaper even ran articles reporting the kidnapping of a prostitute urged readers to treat it lightly, noting that among the Chinese women stealing was comparable to horse stealing among Americans. It was a serious crime against someones property, but not a grave offense to someones person. For some prostitutes, suicide, madness or a violent death proved to be the only way out of misery.

One prostitute tried to run away from her owner and hide in the Nevada hills. By the time she was found, both her feet had frozen and had to be amputated, and in the end she courted death by refusing to take medicine or food. In another instance, a popular dance hall girl nicknamed The Yellow Doll by her admirers in Deadwood, South Dakota, was found chopped into pieces in 1876. In Virginia City, Nevada, six Chines prostitutes committed suicide to escape enslavement. Most prostitutes did not have the individual or collective means to resist their fate. Refusing to work only brought on beatings and other physical tortures.

Cases were reported of prostitutes attempting escape with the help of lovers, but only a few succeeded. Because of the high value placed on prostitutes, owners went to great expense to recover their property. Hiring highbinders to retrieve them and paying legal fees to file writs of habeas corpus or criminal charges against the women for grand larceny. Once the women were arrested, the owners would post the required bail, drop the charges, and repossess the women. During those times, not all prostitutes met these horrible fates, there were a few who escaped the confines of their enslavement.

China Annie was an exceptional case. A prostitute belonging to a member of the Yeong Wo Company in Idaho City, she escaped to Boise to marry her lover, Ah Guan. Her owner charged her with grand larceny for stealing herself, and after a four-week search, she was apprehended and taken to court. The judge, sympathetic to her cause, dismissed the case and allowed her to return to her husband. Another prostitute who won her freedom, Polly Bemis, survived the harsh frontier life to become a legendary figure in her community. Born lalu Nathoy in northern China in 1853, she grew up in poverty.

At an early age she was sold for two bags of seed to bandits, shipped to America as a slave, and auctioned off to a Chinese saloon keeper in an Idaho mining camp. She later married Charlie Bemis, who won her in a poker game, and the two homesteaded on twenty acres of land along the Salmon River. Twice she saved Charlies life, and many times she nursed neighbors back to health. She was so well respected that when she died in 1933, members of the Grangeville City Council served as her pallbearers and the creek running through her property was named Polly Creek in her honor.

A number of established institutions responded to the plight of Chinese prostitutes. For many years the Chinese Six Companies, the governing body in Chinatown, sought to have prostitutes and their procurers deported and worked with the authorities to eradicate the problem. American newspapers frequently ran stories about the evils of prostitution, but almost always in a sensation way, using headlines such as Story of Girl Shows Workings of a Chinese Ring, Confession of a Chinese Slave Dealer, Her Back Was Burnt With Irons, and Chinese Girl Flees to the Mission From Inhuman Owner.

Presbyterian missionaries also made in their crusade to rescue Chinese prostitutes. In 1874 the Womens Occidental Board established the Presbyterian Mission Home as a refuge for Chinese girls and young women in San Franciscos Chinatown. The home remained in operation until 1933 when the last major anti-prostitution trial took place. The directors, Maragaret Culbertson and Donaldina Cameron, successfully conducted numerous rescue raids with the help of the police, using the press coverage of the raid to turn public opinion against Chinese prostitution.

Between 1874 and 1908 approximately one thousand mistreated mui jai and prostitutes were rescued, housed and educated at the home. Some, unaccustomed to the restrictions and austerity of the home, ran away and returned to their former status. Others chose to return to China or stay and later married Chinese Christians. The story of Wong Ah So is typical of the lives of these rescued Chinese prostitutes. Born into a poor Catonese family, she was betrothed and married to a Chinese laundryman at 19 and taken to America. Even if I just peeled potatoes there, he told my mother I would earn lots of money.

Upon arrival in San Francisco, Wong Ah So discovered that her husband had lied to her and her mother and that she had been brought to America to work as a prostitute. Seven months later she met a friend of her fathers at a banquet. The friend recognized her and sought help from the Presbyterian Mission on her behalf. She was later rescued in Fresno, California, and placed in the home, where she recalled she started learning English and how to weave, and I am going to send money to my mother when I can. I cant help but cry, but it is going to be better Wong Ah Sos story end happily but most of the other prostitutes did not end quite so well.

Many of them were not as lucky as China Annie, and Polly Bemis. Most of them were diseased and were left on the streets to die. When no longer young and attractive, prostitutes were put to work in cribs or small cubicles. In 1870, Chines prostitutes were a major political concern for the new cities of the West. Chinese prostitutes were figures for a conduit of disease and social decay which was sensationalized in newspaper accounts, magazine articles, and official inquiries into the social hygiene of these women.

In California, these hygiene issues were the catalyst for the supporters of prohibition of Chinese immigration to the United States. The first act limiting Chinese immigration was the Page Act of 1870, which ostensibly prohibited Chinese, Japanese and Mongolian women from being brought to or entering the United States to engage in immoral or licentious activities. The Page Act, on the presumption of bad character and immoral purpose, required all Chinese women who wished to come to the United States to submit to lengthy and humiliating interrogations of their character prior to being issued a visa in China.

The Page Act effectively closed off the immigration of Chinese wives of immigrants already in the United States. But it did little to stop the illegal trade in women which was protected by corrupt officials on both sides of the Pacific. The perception of Chiense prostitution as a widespread threat to the nations moral and physical well-being was greatly exaggerated. At the peak of Chinese prostitution in the late 1870s, it was reported that some 900 Chinese women in San Francisco worked as prostitutes.

The number of Chinese women who worked as prostitutes other than on the West Coast, however, was quite small. Although New York’ Chinatown gained notoriety for prostitution, opium, and gamling, it was reported that only three of the prostitutes in the quarter were Chinese, while the overwhelming number of prostitutes who worked there were white. Nevertheless, the image of the Chinese prostitute as a source of pollution was considered a matter of urgent concern. Chinese prostitutes were said to constitute a particular threat to the physical and moral development of young white boys.

In San Francisco, a Public Health Committee investigated conditions in Chinatown in 1870 professed shock that boys as young as ten could afford and did regularly use the services of the lowest level of Chinese prostitutes. In a popular environment in which theories of national culture were freely combined with theories of germs and social hygiene, it was asserted by some public health authorities that Chinese prostitutes were the racially special carriers of more virulent and deadly strains of venereal disease. The general tended to ignore the realty and focus on the sensational accounts that fueled the perception of a social crisis.

The name People’s Republic of China seems a contradiction of its meaning. If indeed its name is the People’s Republic of China than why did it massacre peaceful protestors with tanks and machine guns? But the Chinese government argues that the force was necessary for maintaining a national order (Muzhi Zhu). The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is actually an authoritarian state in which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is the main source of power.

At the national and regional levels, party members hold almost all the top government, police, and military positions. The country’s authority rests with members of the Politburo (China Country Report on Human Rights Practices for 1999). CCP stresses that it needs to maintain stability and social order. The Government’s poor human rights record in 1999 shows the extent at which the Government intensified efforts to suppress its 1. 27 billion people.

A crackdown against a newly formed opposition party, which began in the fall of 1998, broadened and intensified during the year. By the end of 1998, almost all of the key leaders of the China Democracy Party (CDP) were serving long prison terms or were in custody without any formal charges, and only a handful of members nationwide dared to remain active publicly (China Country Report on Human Rights Practices for 1999). Tens of thousands of members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement were arrested after the movement was banned in July.

Thereafter, several leaders of the movement were sentenced to long prison terms in late December, and hundreds of others were sentenced to reeducation through labor. Late in the year, according to some reports, the government started confining some Falun Gong adherents to psychiatric hospitals (China Country Report on Human Rights Practices for 1999). The government continued to commit widespread and well-documented human rights abuses in violation of internationally accepted terms.

These abuses stemmed from the government’s extremely limited tolerance of public unrest. The Constitution and laws provide for fundamental human rights however, these rights are often ignored in practice. Abuses included instances of extra-judicial killings, torture and mistreatment of prisoners, forced confessions, arbitrary arrest and detention, lengthy incommunicado detention, and denial of due process(Amnesty International. “China, violations of human rights). Prison conditions at most facilities remained very harsh.

In many cases, especially in sensitive political cases, the judicial system denied criminal defendants basic legal safeguards and due process of the law, merely because authorities attached higher priorities to maintaining public order and suppressing political opposition than to enforcing the legal norms of the country (Amnesty International. “China, violations of human rights). The government infringed on citizens’ privacy rights. The government tightened restrictions on freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

They also increased controls on the internet, which caused self-censorship by journalists. They severely restricted freedom of assembly, and continued to restrict freedom of association. They continued to restrict freedom of religion, and intensified its controls on unregistered churches (China Country Report on Human Rights Practices for 1999). The Government also continued to restrict freedom of movement, meaning they do not permit independent domestic nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in order to monitor public human rights conditions.

Discrimination and violence against women, including coercive family planning practices, which sometimes include forced abortion and forced sterilization is a major problem, as well as prostitution, trafficking of women and children, abuse of children, and discrimination against the disabled and minorities (Amnesty International. “China, no one is safe”). The Government continued to restrict tightly worker rights, and forced labor in prisons.

Particularly serious human rights abuses persisted in some minority areas, especially in Tibet and Xinjiang, where restrictions on religion and other basic freedoms have increased over time (Amnesty International. “China, no one is safe”) But in 1996 China released a report that claimed. “China’s national economy maintained steady, rapid and sound growth, the efforts to build up democracy and a legal system were notably strengthened, and the human rights conditions maintained a good momentum of continuous improvement and promised further progress”(Muzhi Zhu).

The Chinese government also goes on to list that there has been a decrease in the population of poverty-stricken Chinese, increased levels of local democracy, and a “severe crackdown” on crime. They also say that increases in the protection of the rights of workers, and the rise in education levels have increased the quality of human rights in the country (Muzhi Zhu). If indeed the countries authority rests with the Politburo, then it can easily release and make up these statistics.

Actually, according to a release by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, in February 25, 2000, manipulation of the press by the government for political purposes increased during the year of 1999. After authorities moved at the end of 1998 to close a number of newspapers and fire several editors, a more cautious atmosphere developed. As part of its crackdown against the popular Falun Gong spiritual movement, the government has also employed every element of the state-controlled media to conduct a nationwide anti-Falun Gong propaganda (Amnesty International.

China, violations of human rights). The press however, has still continued to report on cases of corruption and abuse of power by some local officials. Actually, it is also estimated that several thousand, are detained in violation of international human rights instruments for peacefully expressing their political, religious, or social views (Amnesty International. “China, violations of human rights). Another current problem is torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment. The law in China prohibits torture.

However, police and other members of the security have employed torture and degrading treatment in dealing with detainees and prisoners (Amnesty International. “China, violations of human rights). Former detainees and the press reported credibly that officials have used electric shocks, prolonged periods of solitary confinement, incommunicado detention, beatings, shackles, and other forms of abuse against detained men and women (Amnesty International. “China, violations of human rights).

Prominent dissident Liu Nianchun, who was released in December 1998, reported that guards used an electric stun gun on him (China Country Report on Human Rights Practices for 1999). Persons detained pending trial were particularly at risk during pretrial detention, due to weaknesses in the legal system or lack of the implementation of the revised Criminal Procedure Law. In February a domestic publication reported that an engineer in Liaoning province, who was suspected of theft, suffered brain damage as a result of hours of beatings while in police custody.

The police eventually determined that the engineer was innocent and released her. She later sued the local government. Chinese reporters who attended her trial said that there were efforts in court to intimidate them. (China Country Report on Human Rights Practices for 1999). However, the Chinese Government has also stated, “the Chinese judiciary deals with every complaint of torture promptly after it is filed, and those found guilty are punished according to law” (Muzhi Zhu).

For the first time in 1998, as part of its campaign to address police abuse, the government published national torture statistics, along with 99 case studies, in a volume entitled “The Law Against Extorting a Confession by Torture. ” The book, which was published by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, stated that 126 people died during police interrogation in 1993 and 115 died in 1994. Incidentally, most cases of torture are believed to go unreported (China Country Report on Human Rights Practices for 1999).

Perhaps one of the most shocking things in the Chinese human rights debate deals with the corruption within the court system. Official government statistics report that there are some 230,000 persons in reeducation-through-labor camps, sentenced to up to 3 years through administrative procedures, and not by a trial (China Country Report on Human Rights Practices for 1999). The Chinese Constitution states that the courts shall, in accordance with the law, exercise judicial power independently (Muzhi Zhu).

However, this has not been the case because the judiciary is subject to policy guidance from both the government and the Communist Party. It has been found that at both the central and local levels, the government and the CCP frequently interfere in the findings of the judicial system and take a hand in deciding court decisions (Amnesty International. “China, violations of human rights). Another problem is that judges are appointed by the people’s congress at the corresponding level of the judicial structure, which can lead to an undue influence by local politicians over the judges they appoint(Amnesty International.

China, violations of human rights). During a May 1998 conference at a Beijing university, one expert estimated that more than 70 percent of commercial cases in the lower courts were decided according to the wishes of local officials rather than by the law. ( Amnesty International. “China, violations of human rights) State-run media published numerous articles calling for an end to such “local protectionism” and demanded the development of a judiciary that is independent of interference by officials.

Amnesty International. “China, violations of human rights) Another violation of the Human rights code consists of the right to privacy. Government interference in daily personal and family life continues to decline for the average citizen (Amnesty International. “China, no one is safe”). In some urban areas, most people still depend on government-linked work units for housing, permission to have a child, approval to apply for a passport, and other aspects of ordinary life.

Despite legal protections, authorities often do not respect the privacy of citizens (Amnesty International. “China, no one is safe”). Although the law requires warrants before law enforcement officials can search premises, this provision has frequently been ignored. However, the Public Security Bureau and the procuratorate can issue search warrants on their own authority (Amnesty International. “China, no one is safe”). The Constitution states, “freedom and privacy of correspondence of citizens are protected by law”( Muzhi Zhu).

However, in practice, authorities often monitor telephone conversations, electronic mail, and internet-communications of foreign visitors, businessmen, diplomats, and journalists, as well as activists, and others. The security services routinely monitor and enter the residences and offices of foreigners to gain access to their computers, telephones, and fax machines (Amnesty International. “China, violations of human rights). Authorities also open and censor domestic and international mail.

Han Chunsheng, a Voice of America (VOA) listener who allegedly sent over 20 letters criticizing of the Government to a VOA mailbox, remains in prison on an 8-year sentence for counterrevolutionary incitement and propaganda (Amnesty International. “China, violations of human rights). Government security even monitors and sometimes restricts contact between foreigners and citizens (Amnesty International. “China, violations of human rights).

Further problem of the Chinese Human rights debates addresses the fact that it is often dangerous and ill advised for protestors to peaceably assemble and protest the government. The Constitution provides for freedom of peaceful assembly. However, the government severely restricts this right in practice (China Country Report on Human Rights Practices for 1999). The Constitution stipulates that such activities may not challenge, so to speak “party leadership”, or infringe upon the “interests of the State”(China Country Report on Human Rights Practices for 1999).

Protests against the political system or national leaders are prohibited. Authorities deny permits and quickly move to suppress demonstrations involving expression of negative political views (China Country Report on Human Rights Practices for 1999). At times police used force against demonstrators. In January the Western Press reported that one protester was killed and more than 100 others injured when police dispersed some 3,000 villagers in the province of Hunan, who were protesting corrupt government and high taxes (China Country Report on Human Rights Practices for 1999).

Last March in the city of Suining, in Sichuan province, police reportedly beat demonstrators in an attempt to disperse a three-day protest by machinery factory workers over unpaid benefits (China Country Report on Human Rights Practices for 1999). In April two groups of CDP members in Hangzhou attempted to lay wreaths for victims of the Tiananmen massacre in two different parks. Police reportedly dispersed one group, and arrested three participants. The other group was able to hold its vigil (China Country Report on Human Rights Practices for 1999).

In October a violent protest reportedly broke out in Panzhihua, in Sichuan province, after police refused to help a robbery victim who subsequently was knifed by his attackers. Many of those protesting were injured in clashes with the police; 10 people were reportedly arrested (China Country Report on Human Rights Practices for 1999). In late October, police in Ganzi, an autonomous region in western Sichuan, reportedly clashed with up to 3,000 ethnic Tibetans who were protesting the arrest of 3 monks.

One of the monks arrested was the respected Buddhist teacher Sonam Phuntsok, from the nearby Dargye Monastery. The police reportedly fired upon the crowd, injuring some protestors. It is unknown whether any persons were killed, but up to 80 ethnic Tibetans reportedly were detained in connection with the incident (Amnesty International. “China, no one is safe”). To help combat human rights violations Chinese leaders have appealed to western powers to impose sanctions on the Chinese. Some legislators include the prohibition of high Chinese government officials to come to the United States.

Trade restrictions on certain goods, and less money to be given as foreign aid to China are a probable solution. According to Chinese Wei Jingsheng, China is at a critical juncture where its leaders really need economic support from the United States. “This is the moment when America should be adding more pressure, asking them to change more, to reform more” (Wei Jingsheng). Also the Chinese leaders are not so amenable to reason as they are to pressure, and the United States has tremendous influence on China’s policies.

There has however been some good news; one overseas human rights group reported in January that there has been some 9,000 cases of mishandling of justice discovered in 1998 and that 1,200 police officers had been charged with criminal offenses (Muzhi Zhu). It is also said that authorities will continue a nationwide crackdown on police corruption and abuses. Government statistics released in March showed that in 1998 corruption prosecutions were up 10 percent, to over 40,000 investigations and 26,000 indictments of officials ((Muzhi Zhu).

In January there were reports that Public Security Bureau Deputy Minister, Li Jizhou, was detained for corruption. Several other high-ranking party officials also were prosecuted on corruption charges during the year. Also late in the year, National People’s Congress Standing Committee Chairman, Li Peng issued a warning on police corruption (Jingsheng Wei). All though these are small steps they are steps in the right direction to help bring to an end the atrocities committed by Chinese officials.

And the Chinese people can look up to the words of Wei Jingsheng. “Some say that after the student protests of 1989 and the massacre at Tiananmen Square in 1989, democracy and freedom in China died. I do not believe this to be so, and only have some patience and you will see what happens in a generation or two; wait and witness the backbone people can show when they are fighting for their freedom. As Czechoslovakia democrat Tomas G. Masaryk said in totalitarian Central Europe nearly 50 years: “Dictators always look good until the last minutes. “

In the summer of 1966 there was a new effort on the part of the head leaders in China to further control the actions and thoughts of the people in China. The Red Guards were the force to do it all. A group of kids who mostly in their teens and some in college were put into this gang. This so-called military force was called the Red Guards. Groups of these Red Guards traveled from the large cities all the way to empty country sides. They held huge demonstrations at every stop. Their main goal was to eliminate as many as possible of the customs and traditional thoughts of he old China.

They participated in Long Marches and other activities. The man they looked up to most was a person by the name of Mao. They carried huge portraits of him and also carried banners and flags. Many people in the group beat on gongs and drums. Some observers said it looked more like a circus then a political demonstration. They did a lot of things that many thought were outrageous. At one point they raced widely through Peking denouncing anyone who was in a business. They even made a demand to change the meaning of the colors in a stop light.

According to the Red Guards, that because the color of communism is red, that you should go on red and stop on green. When the Red Guards added students from another school or workers from another factory they decorated the entrance with purple paper, lanterns and a red cloth covered with flowers. People who did not agree with Mao Tse-tung and his teachings were often dragged through the streets and forced to wear dunce caps. The main reason of course was to humiliate. This group in time became more destructive. Even some of China’s highest leaders were taken.

The Red Guards demonstrations asted through fall, and winter of 1966 and well into 1967. The Red Guards highly looked up to Mao they thought of him as a father who shared the same views. Chairman Mao greatly influenced many of their decisions. They stormed on to railroad trains to spread their ideas coast to coast. Many people thought of them as a disorderly young army. Most of their efforts were devoted to wholesale destruction of reputation and careers. One of their best weapons were political posters which were about many high political figures.

Political people were not the only ones to be embarrassed, professors and ngineers were also humiliated by the young group. Many young people agreed with the Red Guards and their point of views. They felt that schools and universities were being run to produce a small group of highly educated people. Then those people would go ahead to become leaders. They would soon consider they were better than the workers and peasents and it would be like they were under the emperors once again. The Red Guards did not care about anything that they destructed. In Peking, Red Guards attacked and burnt down the Brittish Embassy.

In 1967 a mob f the guards stormed the Foreign Ministry. They destroyed some achives, carried away others, and even attempted to kidnap the Foreign Minister but they were unsuccessful. No one in China could accuratly tell you an explanation on of why they organizied. Some people think they were inspired because the wanted to become communist leaders after Mao’s death and take over government. Some say their main reason was to make certain politicians get a bad name and have them removed from their postions. Which would make it easier for them to rule in China in Mao’s name.

In this essay, I will look at the outpouring of thought, art and literature during the early empire. More so though, I will focus on what factors led to this renewed focus on culture in the early empire. It would seem that there were several factor which would lead to this renewed interest in culture in early China, but the most significant of these factors would be the re-establishment of a strong central government. This re-establishment of a strong central government laid the foundation for cultural growth. It brought with it prosperity to China, through improved infrastructure, such as the canals and graineries.

As a result of these improvements, China flourished both economically, militarily and of course culturally. We first must look at some of the history of the centralization of China, which occurred, then was destroyed and then once more established. First by the Han Dynasty, then latter by the Sui and the T’ang In 202 B. C the Han dynasty began and brought with it more contemporary thought and inovations in culture and helped china progress as a nation. This was the beginning of a glorious time and the Chinese people still refer to them selves as Han.

The Han dynasty rivaled even Rome. They were however conqured by nomadic barbarians around 220AD and this threw China into its dark ages where nomadic uncetralized rule and Buddism ruled. In 589 AD China was reunited by the Sui and began to bring back the culture that was china. By 618 though the Sui resources were exahusted from reuniting china and they were replaced by the T’ang dynastry which brought china to new peaks of organizational stability , ecomonic and milllitary strenght, and cultural spendor. The first of the three great dynasty’s of the Early Empire were the Han.

The Han were some what ruthless in their assention to the throne, but believed in ruling to serve the people. The Han lessened the severity of punishments established by the Ch’in, but they did grant heridity to certain powerful allies in the east to help centralize china as the Ch’in had. The country flourished, and taxes were cut and graniers were once again overflowing so as to hedge against famines which can frequent China. There was an out pouring of culture and the country did well and the government had massive cash reserves.

One of the greatest emperors in chinese history was a Han named Wu-ti, he was young assertive and made China proper greatly. Wu-ti cut back on the lords and merchants powers, and made reforms. He was aggressive in his foreign policy and this was to build power for the eminant show down with the Hsiung-nu nomads of the north and west boarders. He conqured vast areas of Asia and set up a tributary system where the local rules remained in power under him, while providing gifts to the emperor.

Under Wu-ti China saw a great cultural flowering and produced China’s greatest historian Ssu-man Ch’ien the most estemmed Han poet Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju and the most infulential Han philosopher Tung Chung-shu. Confucian ideals were re-adopted , schools were formed for teaching of Confucian ways, and it was the beginning of the civil service exams. With the end of Wu-ti, the dynasty began to decline and he was succeded by a number of inferior Han rulers, who were often seen as crule.

It would seem that the Han’s heavenly madate expired and the death of Wu-ti was the beginning of the end of the Han, as china was plagued by natural disaster, landlord and aristocratic rule. The Han dynasty offically ended in 220 ad and the country was once again divided throwing china into their dark ages. China was separated into north and south and the county as a whole weakend. Barbarian invasion was rampant, and the Han capitols were destroyed by the Hsiung-nu The Sui were to finnally reunite China led by Yang Chien in 589 AD.

The Sui reunited north and south China, rebuilt infrastructure. The Sui were very ambitous in the rebulding of the infrastructer of China such as the great wall, cannals and graineries. They were also very millitarily active and made many conquests. This disrupted domestic economics and they were seen as oppressive and resented by the people. This gave way to the T’ang Dynasty in 618 AD. Under the T’ang, China combined properity cultural grandeur, aristocatic sophistocation military power and supremacy in foreign relations to achieve an age of greatness unapproached since the Han.

They owed much of their prosperity to the maturing institutions that had been developed by the Sui. They began the civil service exams again and peoples merit was based on knowledge and education. They helped to minimize ecomonic inequalities by using the equal fields system of land tenture. All arable land was owned by the state and allocated equally on a per capita basis for lifetime tenture and collected taxes, as well as requisitioned labour servives in accordance with head counts. They combined new and old elements of China.

T’ang T’ai-tsung was considered the real founder of the T’ang dynasty and is revered as on of the most heroic emperors in Chinese history. He managed to consolidate all of China by 624, and all opposition was disposed of. While T’ai-tsung was revered for his millitary exploits, he is estemmed for his consientious capable and benevolent role as civil administrator. He promoted eductation, welcomed advice, chose able ministers and delegated authority wisely (hucker 141) he was tolerant to philosophical matters and religon.

His policies and government were based on confucian principals, but he enjoyed the concept of Taoism and buddhism, and even alowed for a christian missonary to build a church. Other T’ang emperors that followed, were very contientious in administration. Capitol punishment was abolished, the beauracracy was tailored, court extravaganves were cut back and foreign policy was pursed with vigor. Cultural gorwth was encouraged in all forms and the Hanlin Academy at court was set up to encourage and teach talented scholars and litterateurs.

Music and dance institute were set up to teach theatrical performers for palace entertainment. Under T’ang rule the court was splendid and some of the greatest cultural geniuses of the chinese tradition came about, such as the poets Li Po and Tu Fu as well as some of the most notable paiters Wu Tao-tzu and Wang Wei. (hucker 143) Hoever the T’ang would not rule for ever and their dynasty soon came to decline. Presure from invading arabs and turks . The T’ang stability began to fade around 760 and from there it was more in decline. Once again the Landlords began to regain control and social mobility declined.

As central government weakend, early T’ang restraints on explotive landlordism, private commerce, and social mobility withered away; and gradually the social and political eminence of the old aristocratic class, the mainstay of early T’ang stability, was underminded by irreversible waves of social change. By the end of the eighth century, trends were developing that would bring about a vastly altered way of life in post T’ang age. (hucker 146) The T’ang Dynasty would eventually fall in 914 giving way to a period of instability know as the five dynasties era.

With the unification of the Chinese state, first under the Han, and then next primarily under the T’ang, political and social concerns that preoccuoied early Confucian and Legalist thinkers gave way to new forms of thinking and new areas of concentration. With political stability now achieved, intellectuals could focus their energy on administrative routines, politics and institution building. Metaphysical and cosmological thinking, which had seemed rather capricious aberration in pre-Ch’in times now surged into the mainstream of China’s intellectual history.

Thinkers began to contemplate larger questions of the universe and mans place in it. Taoism was given new birth, and Buddhism began to capture the Chinese imagination. In the arts and litterature, the most renowned achievements of China’s early imperial age were in historiography, poetry and Buddhist inspired statuary and paintings (Hucker 221). China developed well orgainzed and detailed accounts in history to which no other society can match over such a long period of time. Poetry became the persuit and passion of most educated Chinese.

Much of the poetry of the time was a reflection of inovations in music and the performing arts, as well as other changes that were ongoing in China’s cultural development. Cultural changes were reflected in paintings and other forms of art such as pottery. Chinese culture was to be of the envy of much of the surrounding areas, and was emulated by Korea, Vietnam, and Japan. Of all of these cultural inovations poetry was the most prevalent, as it was persude by most educated Chinese, and it reflected the feelings of the day, that of simplicity, often influenced by renewed study of Taoism.

One particual poem that I came across in my reading was titled “Resolutions on Walking with a Hangover on a Spring Morning” The world is like a great empty dream Why should one toil away all one’s life? That is why I spend my days drinking, Sprawled in a doze beside the front door. Awaking, I blink at the courtyard before me. A bird is singing among the flowers. “May I inquire, what season is this? ” It’s an oriole warbling in the springtime breeze! I am almost moved to sighs and sobs, But I pour for myself another drink. Lustily singing, I await the bright moon, And by the end of the song I’ve forgotten my cares.

This poem seems to indicate the carefree nature that many Chinese poets and thinker were able to take during these times. It also seems to reflect a renewed interest in Taoism and nature. The Early Empire, was indeed a time of great cultural growth in China. Philosophers were able to contimplate much more than just how the society should be run, but they were able to explore deeper areas of the human race and what their purpose was in the cosmos. This ability to be able to sit back and reflect upon nature the cosmos, and society, was a result of the stability of China.

The Han and T’ang Dynasties brought with them strong central government that focused on carring for the people and restructuring of the beauraeaucatic system through advancement by achievement, not heiridity. This upward mobility gave anyone from any class the chance to progress in Chinese society, and thus the great thinkers, poets and artisans came not only from the small aristocratic population, but rather from the entire vast population of China. This allowed the Chinese culture to grow in all areas, so that they even rivaled great civilizations such as Rome.

This essay will attempt to answer questions coming from the Bernard Faure text assigned in class. The questions are as follows: How does Hu Shih’s approach to Chan differ from D. T. Suzuki’s? Why was the scholarship of the Japanese on Zen not objective? What does Faure mean by the teleological fallacy? What does he mean by the two alternative approaches he suggests: structural analysis and hermeneutics? How does Hu Shih’s approach to Chan differ form D. T. Suzuki’s?

To answer this we must first recognize that Hu Shih emphasizes the historicism of Chan, meaning he places great importance on the historical aspect, while Suzuki aligns himself with the metaphysics aspect. Suzuki states that there are two kinds of people who can talk about Zen: The first(Suzuki), which is one who has a firm grasp on the concepts and greatly understands Zen, the other(Hu Shih), someone who is utterly unable to grab the concepts. Suzuki states that Hu Shih may know Zen historically, but that he does not actually know Zen. Suzuki says about Hu Shih that “it is not a historians business not talk about Zen.

Hu argues that a historic approach to Zen cannot be reduced to the circumstances of its emergence and how it “transmits its situation of departure into a means to understand itself and others. ‘” Since Hu Shih is from the academic world, his approach to Zen is more factual, while Suziki, coming from a Buddhist institution, relies more on the teachings of Zen and what some see as a certain mysticism around it. Hu Shih sees Chan as a result of Chinese culture, politics, and philosophy, while Suzuki believes it to have just rejected the deviations found in Mahayana while keeping its cardinal truth.

Both Hu Shih and Suzuki feel that Chan is a “practical” Chinese way of thinking. Why was the scholarship of the Japanese on Zen not objective? The Japanese scholars approach Zen as intellectual history. They refused to judge the materials they study. Nietzchse says they are like “eunuchs in the harem of history,” meaning they have no desire for history itself, like the eunuchs of Rome, castrated men hired to guard harems. But in there defense, pure objectivity is very close to impossible, these scholars are greatly influenced by their own culture, which in turn, is greatly influenced by Zen.

Faure points out that the scholars do not critically evaluate the ideological content of what they are studying (i. e. Dunhuang manuscripts), instead they just search for an undisputable truth that will no doubt make them the authority on the subject. In doing this, they position themselves as right and get lost and become subjective of what they are studying rather than the objective. What does Faure mean by the teleological fallacy? The definition of teleological fallacy is an erroneous view that does not relate to the design or purpose of Zen.

Faure points out that the teleological fallacy he discusses is the “propensity to read the past in terms of the present, to read early Chan as having its finality in modern Japanese Zen. Faure is referring to historicist scholars’ tendency to forget that the present from which they look back into the past constructs an unquestioned end from which none can escape. This means that scholars view is too narrow, becoming “objectivists” and imagining an “original text” from which all Zen comes from.

In reality, there is no such text because every text is regulated by hermeneutical tradition, therefore proving Faure’s teleological fallacy. What does he mean by the two alternative approaches he suggests: structural analysis and hermeneutics? Faure states that there is a two alternative approach: structural and hermeneutic. He gives an example of incomplete skeletons completed with bones from other skeletons. Analyzing which parts of Zen are the “incomplete skeleton” and which parts are the “add-in bones” is basically what the structural approach to Zen is.

Another example is given, this time using characters from Zen texts and stories. When analyzing the characters, one must observe the following; name, position compared to others in the story, the character of the character, and the functions and actions of the character. You must study all of these together and separate, for if one part is transposed, then the whole may be transposed. Thus, in this example, structural analysis is the study of underlying structure that regulates the transitions of actual biographies.

The hermeneutic approach is a bit different; it is the study of the methodological principles of interpretation of texts. It comes from the “will to take seriously the truth claims of tradition and the literary or philosophical nature of Chan texts. ” The hermeneutic approach is often dialogical, meaning that the message of Chan/Zen is found in the dialogue between two characters in a text or between the text and the reader. A combination of both, structural and hermeneutic, is needed when assessing Chan texts, teachings and history.

Recent Chinese economic policies have shot the country into the world economy at full speed. As testimony of this, China’s gross domestic product has risen to seventh in the world, and its economy is growing at over nine percent per year (econ-gen 1). Starting in 1979, the Chinese have implemented numerous economic and political tactics to open the Chinese marketplace to the rest of the world. Just a few areas China’s government is addressing are agricultural technology, the medical market, and infrastructures, like telecommunications, transportation and the construction industry.

Chinese reform measures even anticipated the rush of foreign investment by opening newly expanded industries to out-of-country investors. Effects of this sudden change in economic strategy by a world power can be felt by practically every nation of the globe involved in international trade. The change in the amount of imports and exports to and from China will increase the demand on countless markets, from automobile, to petrochemical, to pharmaceuticals, and optical fiber. Also, with all the foreign investment China is receiving, the socialistic republic will only grow ore and more interdependent upon the world economy.

However, the impressive growth rate of China’s economy is not without its shortcomings. Problems such as inflation and inefficient state-owned enterprises plague the rise of the Chinese economy. The main goal for China’s modern foreign policies is the development of the Chinese infrastructure. The significance of improved communication and transportation cannot be over-stressed. Economically, enhanced means of communication and transportation allows more expedient supply and demand scheduling.

Two of the latest Chinese reform measures to aid in the development of the country are the Provisional Regulations on Direction Guide to Foreign Investment and the Catalogue Guiding Foreign investment in China. Both these policies place specific industries including telecommunications, machinery, and electronics on top priority. Funding for these projects come from foreign investments and appropriations from the Chinese government in the form of grant financing, and legislative or administrative support.

Yet another example of the Chinese emphasis on industrial based growth s the far-reaching goal of having just under 100 million telecommunication lines by the year 2000. China’s Central Ministry of Posts and Communication said that in order to complete this major task China will enlist the aid of major overseas suppliers and create manufacturing plants within the nation. AT&T, Motorola, Northern Telecom, Alcatel, Erricsson, NEC, and Siemens are just a handful of the multinational companies which hold a considerable share of the Chinese telecom market, once again proving that China is becoming a party to global interdependence.

The Chinese pharmaceutical market, much like Chinese industrial markets, is experiencing rapid growth due to reforms in China’s economic strategy. The nation’s government has decided to lower import tariffs and remove the necessity of an import license to bring pharmaceuticals into the country. Also, patented foreign drugs, such as Tylenol, are now being protected from counterfeiting by administrative action.

The result of these provisions are overseas contractual investments totaling $1. billion in the past five years, and income from the medical industry’s exports reaching 2. times the amount five years ago, according to Zheng Xiaoyu, director of the State Pharmaceutical Administration (scitech/med 1). The pharmaceutical market’s growth is another example of the economic progress China has made. Even after accounting for all the economic benefits recognized by the world, the Chinese still come out as the country with the most gains. However, there are more motives behind China’s market reforms than just purely economic.

On the political front, China is fast becoming an integral part of international organizations. The Chinese government is making a conscious effort to reenter GATT (the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), realizing the importance of creating a favorable trading status among foreign nations. Slowing this progress, the 124 nation strong trade bloc has requested that numerous conditions must be met by China before the nation can become a member of GATT once again.

Several of these provisions are the “elimination of import prohibitions, restrictive licensing requirements and other controls or restrictions; lifting of all restrictions on access to foreign exchange and full convertibility of the Chinese currency” (china-tr. 2). Other important key hemes behind China’s Open-Door policies are “economic and technological cooperation with the West” (china-tr 1) and that China’s government no longer supports Third World revolution. Instead, China realizes that cooperation with developing countries would be far more practical.

Although Chinese foreign policy is aimed at opening the nation’s entire economy to the world, it neglects the agricultural market almost entirely, with the exception of technical contracts. These contracts are designed to improve the transfer of technologies to improve crop yields. “Technical contracts are ade between farmers and village economic cooperatives and a wide variety of offices and technical personnel from different administrative levels” (int12 1). The funding for the technology used by the agricultural industry can be traced to extension stations of political parties, finance bureaus, or local insurance company.

Since the groups funding technical contracts are nothing more than investors, a portion of the profits from increased production due to the technological advancements are returned to these groups. However, the technology providers also bear the risk of investors, “if output and economic eturns can’t reach prescribed figures, the extension administrations have to make up the losses” (intl2 2). Like all good things, China’s formidable economic growth has its downsides. A few of these detriments are inflation, an under-aided agricultural market, government inefficiency, and geographically uneven development.

High inflation, caused by a demand for more exchange medium on the Chinese market is causing Chinese currency to depreciate relative to other national currencies. A lack of emphasis on the agricultural market is causing that sector of the Chinese economy to fall behind, and soon the supply of agricultural products will fall below the demand for these goods, resulting in a sortage. Another problem is the inefficiency of large, state-owned production facilities can be explained by excess bureaucratic red tape and corruption.

Finally, there has been an uneven distribution of development between the land-locked, western section of China and the industrialized east-coast, consequently causing ineffective land use. China has quickly become a world leader in trade and will only increase in importance to the global economy. These facts are proven with China’s urrent economic statistics –growing at over nine percent per year– and economists’ projections of the nation’s future –China will double its gross domestic product of the year 2000 in the year 2010.

The way the Chinese government achieved these impressive economic figures are through a thorough renovation of Chinese trade policies. Reform measures in the country range from reduced trade barriers and technical contracts for agriculture, to infrastructure investment policies and improved standards for pharmaceutical products. However, stemming from China’s economic growth are dilemmas such as nflation and uneven development of the country.

On a planetary scale, the effects of China’s Open-Door policies are best described through a visual representation like the attached graphs. These graphs represent the supply of Chinese goods and services and demand for Chinese products by other countries. As Chinese policies are placed in effect the supply curve shifts to the right because of improved quality standards and higher production capabilities. Open-Door policies also indirectly increase the demand for Chinese goods and services due increased Chinese competitiveness on foreign markets.

In the summer of 1966 there was a new effort on the part of the head leaders in China to further control the actions and thoughts of the people in China. The Red Guards were the force to do it all. A group of kids who mostly in their teens and some in college were put into this gang. This so-called military force was called the Red Guards. Groups of these Red Guards traveled from the large cities all the way to empty country sides. They held huge demonstrations at every stop. Their main goal was to eliminate as many as possible of the customs and traditional thoughts of he old China.

They participated in Long Marches and other activities. The man they looked up to most was a person by the name of Mao. They carried huge portraits of him and also carried banners and flags. Many people in the group beat on gongs and drums. Some observers said it looked more like a circus then a political demonstration. They did a lot of things that many thought were outrageous. At one point they raced widely through Peking denouncing anyone who was in a business. They even made a demand to change the meaning of the colors in a stop light.

According to the Red Guards, that because the color of communism is red, that you should go on red and stop on green. When the Red Guards added students from another school or workers from another factory they decorated the entrance with purple paper, lanterns and a red cloth covered with flowers. People who did not agree with Mao Tse-tung and his teachings were often dragged through the streets and forced to wear dunce caps. The main reason of course was to humiliate. This group in time became more destructive. Even some of China’s highest leaders were taken.

The Red Guards demonstrations asted through fall, and winter of 1966 and well into 1967. The Red Guards highly looked up to Mao they thought of him as a father who shared the same views. Chairman Mao greatly influenced many of their decisions. They stormed on to railroad trains to spread their ideas coast to coast. Many people thought of them as a disorderly young army. Most of their efforts were devoted to wholesale destruction of reputation and careers. One of their best weapons were political posters which were about many high political figures.

Political people were not the only ones to be embarrassed, professors and ngineers were also humiliated by the young group. Many young people agreed with the Red Guards and their point of views. They felt that schools and universities were being run to produce a small group of highly educated people. Then those people would go ahead to become leaders. They would soon consider they were better than the workers and peasents and it would be like they were under the emperors once again. The Red Guards did not care about anything that they destructed. In Peking, Red Guards attacked and burnt down the Brittish Embassy.

In 1967 a mob f the guards stormed the Foreign Ministry. They destroyed some achives, carried away others, and even attempted to kidnap the Foreign Minister but they were unsuccessful. No one in China could accuratly tell you an explanation on of why they organizied. Some people think they were inspired because the wanted to become communist leaders after Mao’s death and take over government. Some say their main reason was to make certain politicians get a bad name and have them removed from their postions. Which would make it easier for them to rule in China in Mao’s name.

The People’s Republic of China is located at Eastern Asia, bordering the East China Sea, Korea Bay, Yellow Sea, and South China Sea, between North Korea and Vietnam. The bordering countries that surround China are Afghanistan 76 km, Bhutan 470 km, Burma 2,185 km, Hong Kong 30 km, India 3,380 km, Kazakhstan 1,533 km, North Korea 1,416 km, Kyrgyzstan 858 km, Laos 423 km, Macau 0.34 km, Mongolia 4,673 km, Nepal 1,236 km, Pakistan 523 km, Russia (northeast) 3,605 km, Russia (northwest) 40 km, Tajikistan 414 km,Vietnam 1,281 km. The type of government China has is Communist state. The GDP of China real growth rate is 7.8% and its per capita is $3,600.

The China is a Communist State. The president of China is President JIANG Zemin. The representative of China is Ambassador LI Zhaoxing. The legislative body is represented by unicameral National People’s Congress, which has 2979 seats elected by the people.

The imports in China are electrical machinery and equipment, machinery and mechanical appliances, plastics, iron and steel, scientific and photograph equipment, paperand paper board, and the Imports partners: Japan 20%, US 12%, Taiwan 12%, South Korea 11%, Germany, Hong Kong, Singapore, Russia.

The exports of China are electrical machinery and equipment, machinery and mechanical appliances, woven apparel, knit apparel, footwear, toys and sporting goods. The industries that China have are iron and steel, coal, machine building, armaments, textiles and apparel, petroleum, cement, chemical fertilizers, footwear, toys, food processing, autos, consumer electronics and telecommunications The exchange rates of china are yuan () per US$1-8.28. The GDP in China is purchasing power parity-$4.42 trillion agriculture: 19% industry: 49% services: 32%.

The population in China is 1,246,871,951, 0-14 years: 26%, 15-64 years: 68%, 65 years and over: 6%. The ethnic groups in China are Han Chinese 91.9%, Zhuang, Uygur, Hui, Yi, Tibetan, Miao, Manchu, Mongol, Buyi, Korean, and other nationalities 8.1%. The religions that China has are Daoism (Taoism), Buddhism, Muslim 2%-3%, Christian 1%. The birth rate in China is 15.1 births/1,000 population. The main language in China is Chinese. The literacy rate in China is 81.5% in which is 89% of men and 73% of women. China has many poor people because of the big population but the government is helping the need.

China has numerous mountains, high plateaus, deserts in west; plains, deltas, and hills in east. The highest point on China according to sea level is Mount Everest 8,848 m and the lowest is Turpan Pendi -154 m. Its climate is very diverse; tropical in south to sub-arctic in north. The total land area is 9,326,410 sq. km and the total water area is 270,550 sq. km. It has 14,500 km of coastline. China suffers numerous disasters like repeated typhoons, harmful floods, tsunamis and earthquakes.

China’s military branches are People’s Liberation Army (PLA), which includes the Ground Forces, Navy (includes Marines and Naval Aviation), Air Force, Second Artillery Corps (the strategic missile force), People’s Armed Police (internal security troops, nominally subordinate to Ministry of Public Security, but included by the Chinese as part of the “armed forces” and considered to be an adjunct to the PLA in wartime). The military power in China is 15-49: 361,267,706. The reaching military age annually 10,273,696.

China has many diseases because of its large population one of the main diseases is called influenza disease. Beijing the capital of China was hit by a epidemic disease and this leave many people infected.

China is a very big country in area and population. It is located in East Asia. It has many resources and takes a great part of the world’s economy. It has a communist government. It has some diseases problems, and a very advanced military .

For years, the world has been oblivious to the painful, degrading traditions toward women that take place behind the “Bamboo Curtain” of China. Falling Leaves , by Adeline Yen Mah, unveils the darker side of Chinese culture through her eyes as an unwanted Chinese daughter. Shocking mistreatment, of not only the author, but also the females in her extended family keep suspense alive throughout the book. My heart sobs at each account of Adeline’s tortured life, but through it all, there was a flicker of her spirit that could not be put out.

In China, girls are seen as a possession or a “cheap commodity” (Yen Mah 100). Sons, especially the eldest, are given far more attention and praise. Families that are well off keep their daughters and marry them off to prominent families’ sons through a marriage broker (“mei-po”). Rich daughters often had their feet bound, a process by which the “four lateral toes of the foot are forced with a bandage under the sole so that only the big toe protruded. (It was) tightened daily for a number of years (so as to) permanently arrest the foot’s growth in order to achieve tiny feet so prized by Chinese men” (Yen Mah 11).

Their inability to walk with ease is a symbol of submissiveness, weakness, and wealth. This tradition is becoming more rare, but still many older women bear its pain today. Adeline’s grandmother went against these traditions by not torturing her own daughter in such an inhumane way. Daughters of poorer families could only wish for such a life of weakness and delicate manner. These girls often become maids, waitresses, or prostitutes. Street girls play a vital role in the “three vices common to Chinese men: opium, gambling, and brothels” (Yen Mah 7).

In my opinion, the treatment of women is the greatest difference between Eastern and Western culture. As Western culture has advanced to bring more rights to women, the traditional ways of China have become a sore thumb on the hand of the world. Even as an Eastern girl ages, she still has little hope for her own independence. Adeline’s grandmother was told by her father these words of shuttering reality: “Your duty is to please him and your in-laws. Bear them many sons. Subliminate your own desires. Become the willing piss-pot and spittoon of the Yens and we will be proud of you. Yen Mah 10)

Though women give up their entire lives to their husband and children, it is still widely accepted by their culture to have multiple concubines (mistresses). In the book, Adeline’s grandfather was defiant to pressure to have a concubine “serve him” (Yen Man 14), and this disapproval of the “social norm” was not to be believed by others. Confucius had professed that “only ignorant women were virtuous,” and it is by this ideal that many families in China think. Throughout the book, Adeline defies tradition by going to college (out of the country) and then moving on to medical school.

Her self- will to try to please her father is mainly a need to be more like her brothers who were adored by the family. Adeline’s fight for acceptance, admiration, and personal success could not be achieved in the sexist society of China or the Westernized Hong Kong. Her many attempts to return to the motherland to shine for her family and country only discouraged her and remind her that there is no place for her achievement in the ancient hearts and minds of the Chinese people. At the peak of Adeline’s youth in China, Westerners amazed and intrigued the Chinese, including Adeline’s father.

She was sent to Catholic boarding schools and taught English. Business was booming in Hong Kong, especially with trade with the United States. Father adopted ambiguous notions about his own race, “he, like many Chinese had come to see Westerners as taller, cleverer, stronger, and better” (Yen Mah 29). Adeline strived to be a model child, but it was unheard of for a Chinese girl to have Western success. This double standard was one of many at this time. Her success as a physician meant nothing to her family, especially her stepmother, Niang, who “ignored me as if I was still a child” (Yen Mah 146).

Adeline discovered in her middle age that China and Hong Kong are not places for women who are not quiet and submissive. Her abusive childhood of mind games, emotional distress, and abandonment stayed with her even outside of China. In the Unites States she had two failed marriages, never seeming to find a balance of the beliefs instilled in her as a child, and the modern beliefs of the West. The past haunts her until her evil stepmother, Niang, dies and she is able to put some closure on the wounds that tradition had put on her mind and heart.

The Three Gorges Dam project on China’s Yangzi River is the world’s largest hydroelectric undertaking. While Chinese leaders say the dam will improve river navigation, prevent periodic flooding, and provide the needed electricity for China’s growing economy, many doubt that the dam will be able to meet the proponents’ claims and instead point to evidence of environmental catastrophe if it is built. Under pressure from NGOs, the Clinton Administration has opposed the provision of competitive export financing for the dam.

This decision sparked criticism from U. S. cutives who argue that by not participating the United States is losing jobs and the opportunity to mitigate the negative aspects of the dam. This paper argues that the U. S. position was justified. As part of a consistent and credible environmental policy to promote sustainable development, the United States should integrate environmental guidelines into its commercial diplomacy. U. S. policy towards China should provide support for prudent environmental policies as well as environmental technology transfers, both to foster environmentalism and advance U. S. commercial interests.

Construction of the Three Gorges Dam on China’s Yangzi River began in earnest in late November 1997, perhaps marking the end of almost 15 years of debate on the project among American policymakers. However, the case highlights a key dilemma in U. S. foreign policy-making that is likely to remain for years to come: how to balance U. S. commercial interests with environmental concerns. Though lauded by environmentalists, the Export-Import (Ex-Im) Bank’s decision not to provide financing for U. S. equipment suppliers vying for dam-related contracts has been criticized roundly by American corporations.

They claim the policy hampers their efforts to break into the lucrative Chinese market. The prospect of similar potentially destructive megadams being proposed in other emerging economies means that U. S. policy on the Three Gorges Dam sets a precedent that will either aid or hamper American efforts to promote sounder environmental policies abroad. This paper will examine the Ex-Im Bank’s decision and its implications for U. S. foreign environmental policy. To this end, it will first outline the rationales behind support for and opposition to the project, including an evaluation of the net environmental impact of the dam.

The following section will consider several issues raised by the case in order to assess the merits of the U. S. government’s stance. The paper concludes with some recommendations for a more credible and consistent U. S. foreign environmental policy. The concept of the Three Gorges Dam is over 75 years old, dating back to when it was first proposed by the nationalist leader Sun Yat-Sen, in 1919. The dam was a dream of communist leader Mao Zedong, who felt it would be a potent symbol of China’s self-sufficiency and ability to develop without western aid.

In 1992, Chinese leaders officially announced plans to harness the river’s power by constructing the world’s largest hydroelectric dam only after communist leaders managed to silence opposition and pushed the plan through the National People’s Congress. The Three Gorges refers to a 120-mile stretch of limestone cliffs along the upper reaches of the Yangzi River where the water drops precipitously through the Qutang, Wu, and Xiling gorges. The region is linked to folklore and important historical events, and its beauty has inspired Chinese painters and classical poets such as Li Bai for centuries.

Since the dam’s approval, however, the project has met with significant opposition, both domestic and international, as human rights groups, environmentalists, and historians decry the extraordinary costs the dam will incur. The dam, which will be 1. 3 miles long and 610 feet high, is expected to be completed by 2009. It will create a 385 mile-long reservoir stretching back up the river that will totally engulf the Three Gorges, as well as 115,000 acres of rich farmland, thirteen cities, hundreds of villages, and countless historic temples and archeological sites. Between 1. d 1. 9 million people will need to be resettled.

The project poses significant ecological dangers, technical challenges, and human rights issues and has raised questions about the rights of other industrialized nations to intervene in Chinese internal affairs. It is the largest, most expensive, and perhaps most hazardous hydroelectric project ever attempted. Both its technical and social dimensions are staggering. In China, the project has fueled a heated debate over its feasibility and scientists as well as concerned citizens fear an economic and ecological catastrophe.

According to some, the economic, social, and ecological costs of completing the dam are not warranted (International Rivers Network 1997). Experts from around the world believe the dam cannot control the river nor meet China’s electricity demand (Kahn 1994, Burton 1994, Pearce 1995, Sullivan 1995). After conducting a four-year study of the project’s feasibility, the World Bank concluded that the project design is not “an economically viable proposition,” and refused financing. In November 1997, however, the Three Gorges Dam project entered a crucial phase. The Yangzi River was diverted and construction commenced.

The Chinese government has invited foreign companies to take part in the project with the prospect of lucrative exports and entry into the biggest emerging market in the world. The Japanese, German, French and Canadian governments have stepped forward to help their companies garner a piece of the project. However, under pressure from environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the Clinton administration has opposed the provision of competitive export financing through the Ex-Im Bank, citing concerns about the adverse environmental effects, human rights violations, and economic consequences.

American companies have thus been left out of the game. The decision has sparked considerable criticism from U. S. executives who argue that while the project is controversial, not only is the dam being built, but it is proceeding ahead of schedule. If bids by American firms were approved by the Chinese government, they say, $1 billion of exports to the project would generate over 19,000 American jobs and assure entry into the booming Chinese market for U. S. companies. In the meantime, these jobs are going to foreign competitors.

By not ives argue, the United States is not only losing thousands of American jobs, but also the opportunity to mitigate the negative aspects of the dam. Moreover, they complain that the Chinese market, already one of the world’s most competitive, is made more so for American companies because the U. S. government does not always separate political from commercial considerations. On the other hand, backers of the administration’s decision argue that the United States has the moral obligation to stand up for the environment and human rights.

They also argue that the withholding of economic benefits is the quickest, and sometimes only, way to get the attention of uncooperative foreign governments, even in cases where the outcome appears futile. Since this is the first attempt to build a dam of this magnitude, different opinions regarding the benefits, duration, and cost of the construction have been formulated. On the one hand, it is obvious that the construction of the dam will result in the flooding of a sizable area of land, including entire villages and historical sites.

On the other hand, proponents of the dam claim that the introduction of such a large amount of clean hydroelectric power into China’s rapidly expanding economy might mean a significant reduction in the emission of fossil fuel pollution. Experts warn that the success of the Three Gorges Dam is not guaranteed, and disagree as to the net environmental impact of the project. A critical question here is whether the environmental concerns of China can be considered a U. S. national interest. Should that be the case, do the developed nations have a right to dictate which environmental impact is more appropriate to China?

Should environmental concerns be a part of U. S. commercial policy? Should the U. S. government continue to push the Ex-Im Bank? Should U. S. trade policy continue to try to change foreign government’s behavior by unilaterally imposing trade sanctions? In the following sections, we will examine the U. S. policy towards the Three Gorges Dam. First, we examine the project’s net environmental impact and describe the position of the United States. Next, we will discuss the issues raised by the case as outlined above.

The concluding section will outline some recommendations for future U. S. foreign environmental policy. Chinese leaders argue that the dam will overall have beneficial effects. First, it will generate 18,000 megawatts of electricity, which would decrease by one tenth the country’s reliance on coal power, and thus reduce the amount of pollution over China’s citiesone of the most severe problems in China today. Second, it will prevent the periodic flooding of the Yangzi which has already claimed half a million lives this century.

At present, 15 million lives are at stake as the river rises ever higher above the surrounding land because of sediment deposits on the river bed, while dikes can no longer be raised safely (Veltrop 1997). The dam is expected to cut incidence of serious floods from once in 10 years to once in 100 years (Xinhua News Agency 1997, China Says Three 1997, Veltrop 1997). Third, it will make the upper part of the Yangzi more navigable, “raising the river’s navigable tonnage by a big margin” (China Says Three 1997).

Improved navigability would allow ocean-going freighters to penetrate the depths of China’s remote Southwest, bringing much needed economic development and prosperity to the region. The project is also expected to develop reservoir fisheries, stimulate tourism in and around the reservoir, improve water quality downstream, protect the lake areas downstream, and enable south-to-north water transfer sometime in the next century (Veltrop 1997). Since market liberalization in 1979, China’s vast economy has grown at a breakneck pace, regularly topping 10 percent annual growth.

Accompanying this rapid industrialization has been a tremendous increase in demand for electrical power and coal burning power plants have introduced enormous amounts of pollution over most cities. Pulmonary disease has become the nation’s leading cause of death. This heavy pollution has international repercussions as well. Japan, Korea and Taiwan already suffer under the acid rain created by Chinese sulfur emissions. China has now become the world’s second leading producer of greenhouse gases.

If current growth rates continue, China will need to develop an additional 17,000 megawatts of energy per year for the next decadeeventually reaching an amount equal to total United States generating capacity today (Burton 1994). If coal is used to produce the additional power, the environmental impacts could be extremely serious and certainly would not be limited to within China’s boundaries. However, environmentalists and experts from around the world, as well as eminent scientists and economists within China, do not see the dam as a viable solution to the problem.

Whether or not the Three Gorges Dam is ever finished, however, experts say hydropower will account for no more than 20 percent of China’s electricity generated by year 2010 (Burton 1994). That leaves no way around a heavy dependence on coal, used widely ot only to fuel China’s industrial boom, but also to heat homes for a population growing by 15 million people a year. Forecasts indicate that China’s emissions of carbon dioxide will increase from approximately 2. 8 billion tons in 1993 to 5. 5 billion tons in 2020 (China Looks At 1996).

Experts say that the best China can hope for is to cut coal’s portion of the energy mix from 75 to 60 percent by the year 2010 (Burton 1994). Even if China was able to improve its large electric power plants, it would not touch the needs of small industrial plants and millions of households for coal. China’s most pressing need is therefore to find cleaner, more efficient ways to burn the fossil fuel, reducing emissions of carbon dioxide, sulfur compounds, and the incompletely combusted particles that form soot.

Domestic opposition to the dam has centered largely on the poor record of China’s Ministry of Water Resources, which includes the collapse of 62 dams in the Henan province in 1975 because of poor engineering and design. The resulting torrents of water wiped out whole cities and took the lives of an estimated 150,000 people (Sullivan 1995). Over 10 million contracted diseases and suffered starvation before the area could be restored and, because the Chinese government never acknowledged the disaster, it was not raised in hearings on the Three Gorges project (Topping 1995).

Anti-dam lobbyists have been calling for an investigation of the Three Gorges construction plans and pushing for more government accountability with the hope of averting the resulting catastrophe if the 36 billion cubic yards of water to be dammed were ever to be released, either due to structural failure or an act of war. Scientists predict that collapse of the megadam would produce a flood 40 times larger than the one caused by the collapse of all 62 iron dams combined, engulfing dozens of towns, and imperiling 10 million Chinese (Topping 1995).

The Ministry, however, has denied requests for public comment on the project and has often refused to consider independent opinions from China’s private sector (Ibid. ). International environmental groups are concerned that the dam will destroy the natural habitats of many of China’s indigenous wildlife species, including the Chinese alligator, the white crane, the river dolphin, and the prehistoric Chinese sturgeon, a fish unique to Yangzi waters (Burton 1994).

In addition, contamination of the river by toxic chemicals may dramatically increase if the 1,600 factories in the area are not cleaned up and moved before the waters begin to rise (Sullivan 1995). Experts warn that, by forever changing the hydrology of the river for thousands of miles, the dam will destroy commercial fish stocks and eprive the complex floodplain agricultural systems of the water and silt they need, thereby threatening the livelihoods of 75 million people who live by fishing or farming along the Yangzi’s bank.

They also point out that the soon to be flooded land of Waxian prefecture is far more fertile than the high ground to which everyone will soon be moved (Stopping the Yangzi’s 1997). Seismologists fear that the weight of the reservoir water will trigger a fault line which lies beneath the proposed area, causing a massive earthquake and perhaps rupturing the dam itself (Kahn 1994, Sullivan 1995).

Experts in hydrology are concerned that the Yangzi’s high levels of silt and sedimentabout 500 billion cubic meter each yearwill clog drainage outlets and create backlogs, possibly flooding upstream cities (Kahn 1994, Sullivan 1995, Topping 1995). The Wall Street Journal reported that the amount of silt is so large that it could turn the dam reservoir into a giant mud pie in a matter of months. The silt problem may also impede the passage of large vessels by creating shifting sandbars and channels.

At present, China does not have the technology to control the flow of river silt through the dam project. A detailed four-year evaluation of the Three Gorges Dam project, funded in the late 1980s by the Canadian government and the World Bank at a cost of $14 million, warned that as the silt is carried downriver and deposited in the reservoir the Yangzi will tend to alter its course, thus increasing the risk of disastrous flood. American engineers who visited the site also concluded that the project would not prevent flooding (Pearce 1995).

The dam may also obstruct, rather than improve, navigation by making shipping vulnerable to an untested lock system that will prohibit the passage of ships whenever serious technical problems arise (Three Gorges Dam 1997). Some critics say that the three goals of power generation, improved navigation, and flood control are incompatible (Stopping the Yangzi’s 1997). The increased sedimentation and the need to substantially lower the reservoir water level in the summer for flood control would limit power generation and interfere with navigation.

They point out that oceangoing vessels could not clear the bridges in Nanjing and Wuhan and enormous locks of unprecedented scale would have to be constructed (Topping 1995). The Three Gorges Dam is expected to cost more than any other single construction project in history (Kahn 1994). Critics have warned that China’s leaders are so determined to build this project, they may have neglected to determine whether it is economically viable. Since construction has begun, the price tag has continued to soar. As late as 1992 the official cost of the dam was $11 billion.

Estimates now exceed $75 billion (Kahn 1994, Burton 1994, Pearce 1995). One critic contends cost could total $77 billion, a sum so great that it could slow China’s recent economic boom (Kahn 1994). Some economists believe that the dam will never make economic sense. A 1994 review of design and financing plans suggested a benefit-cost ratio of 0. 8, meaning that China could never recoup its investment through flood control or electricity benefits, much less make the project a commercial contributor (Ibid. ).

Several opponents of the dam argue that for a lower price, numerous smaller dams could produce more power and greater flood control benefits (Burton 1994, Topping 1995). Such a plan would avert the need for massive population relocation and eliminate the risk of a giant flood. Although ten projects smaller than the Three Gorges are under construction on the upper reaches of the Yangzi and its tributaries, progress is stalling as resources are funneled into the megadam. Given this evidence, we conclude that the economic and environmental cost of the dam outweigh its potential benefits.

The Three Gorges Dam is not a viable solution to China’s navigational or flood control needs, nor is it a prudent approach to China’s energy and environmental problems. The United States was one of the first countries to express interest in participating in the dam project. In the mid-1980s, government and business collaborated on a Three Gorges working group that conducted a feasibility study of the dam with the aim of winning contracts for American companies.

Among the major corporate players recruited by the U. S. Bureau of Reclamation for the study were Bechtel and Merrill Lynch (Tomlinson 1997). In 1985, the working group proposed to the Chinese that the dam be built as a joint venture with selected members of the group. The Bureau of Reclamation was actually hired in the waning days of the Bush Administration by the Chinese to do technical consulting work on the dam. But in 1993, when the Clinton Administration took office, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt canceled the project under pressure from environmental NGOs.

In 1992, because of the increasing influence of more environmentally-attuned officials appointed by President Clinton, the Congress added a requirement to the Ex-Im Bank’s mandate that environmental reviews be conducted for foreign projects that sought its backing, and the project became the first serious test of the new guidelines. The Ex-Im Bank asked the National Security Council (NSC) to convene a panel to evaluate the costs and benefits of American participation. In 1993, the U. S. Bureau of Reclamation stated officially that it was no longer convinced that megadams were economically feasible or environ entally sound.

It also stated that it will not fund any such dams anywhere in the world. In September 1995, the interagency NSC panel recommended to the Ex-Im Bank that it should not help finance American companies in bids to assist in the construction of the dam. Deputy National Security Adviser Samuel R. Berger cited three broad reasons why the Bank should not support the project: First, we think it would be unwise for the United States Government to align itself with a project that raises environmental and human rights concerns on the scale of the Three Gorges.

Second, any decision to provide assistance would present legal difficulties as environmental and human rights group are threatening to sue the Bank if it became involved. Third, the White House has expressed concern about the project’s financial viability as private bankers and the World Bank have raised serious questions about the Chinese government’s estimates of its cost and economic benefits (Dunne 1995). The memo also added a clause that counseled the government to “refrain from publicly condemning the Three Gorges project,” and to “emphasize the U. S. ernment’s commitment to strengthening commercial relations with China and to helping China meet its basic energy needs” so as to avoid afflicting already strained United States-China relations (Companies Turn Up 1996).

Eight months later, the Ex-Im Bank recanted its former proposition that large hydroelectric projects are environmentally beneficial, and voted unanimously not to issue a letter of interest for the project. According to Martin Kamarck, Ex-Im Bank chairman at the time of the ruling, China had failed to “establish the project’s consistency with the Bank’s environmental guidelines” (Tomlinson 1997).

This marked the first time the Ex-Im Bank refused financing on purely environmental grounds (Ex-Im Bank Rejects 1996). The Ex-Im Bank, however, stated that if the Yangzi Three Gorges Project Development Corporation, the project’s sponsor, provided additional information on plans to mitigate environmental degradation, it would reconsider its position. It also stressed that its decision would not in any way limit or impede American companies from doing business related to the project on private terms or with financing from other sources.

However, because China demands export credit guarantees (essentially insurance to cover contracts) and supporting loans from contractors on all major Three Gorges deals, the Ex-Im Bank’s ruling hindered most U. S. -based applicants’ chances. As construction proceeds, the Japanese, Germans, French, and Canadians have stepped forward to help their companies garner a piece of the project, while American firms look on and suffer losses that they say could amount to over $1 billion in exports and 19,000 jobs.

Using private financing over the past few years, for example, Rotec Industries, an Elmhurst, Illinois engineering firm has sold cranes and conveyor belts worth around $50 million to the dam developers and executives reckon a further $100 million of similar equipment will be needed (Tomlinson 1997). But without export credit guarantees the company has lost some potential business to a consortium led by Mitsubishi, which is backed by Japanese export credit guarantees.

Caterpillar estimates it lost out on $200 million in sales as a result of the Ex-Im Bank decision. The decision “gave an enormous advantage to our European and Japanese competitors,” said William Lane, chief lobbyist for the company in Washington, in a recent interview (Ibid. ). Some U. S. companies were forced to use overseas subsidiaries to stay in the running for the project: Westinghouse and GEboth of which lack hydropower expertise in the United Statesrouted their bids for Three Gorges work through Canadian subsidiaries (only the GE bid was successful).

And Voith’s American subsidiary was forced to withdraw from the tender in favor of its German parent, which won $85 million in contracts (Ibid. ). According to the U. S. business lobby, more is at stake than even the hundreds of millions of dollars of contracts. American executives argue that the Three Gorges project is a key way to establish a foothold in China, the world’s fastest growing market (Contest Heats Up 1997). Caterpillar, for instance, sees participation in a showpiece project like the dam as a way of developing good relations with local officials and companies.

Since doing business in China is all about establishing relationships, companies are gambling that profits will materialize in the future as the market continues to grow and opens further to foreign investment. These companies see acquiring a stake in the dam project as a way of gaining a “first-mover’s” advantage. Critics argue that the Clinton administration’s decision illustrates the seeming futility of the increasingly frequent U. S. practice of trying to change a foreign government’s behavior by unilaterally imposing economic sanctions.

While he United States has led the international environmental opposition to the project by withholding low-cost government financing for the $30 billion project, the high-minded effort has had little discernible effect on the massive venture. The they say, is one of the most visible examples of such American initiatives, but there are many (Iritani 1997). The critics also contend that the ability of one nation, even a superpower, to cripple other governments by imposing economic penalties is increasingly ineffective in a global economy where foreign competitors will happily fill any void.

They claim that the real victims of U. S. government sanctions are the American companies forced out of potentially lucrative markets and labeled as unreliable trading partners. And they call for a policy of “constructive engagement,” which entails maintaining economic ties while pushing for change through normal diplomatic channels and multilateral organizations. The Three Gorges Dam case is also an example of how efforts to promote trade come in conflict with political concerns.

The issue is particularly relevant in considering U. S. foreign policy towards China. In its relations with China, the United States has long been torn between engagement and disengagement. This division is currently at work in trade policy, with experts advocating the necessity of free trade and activists leading public opinion by highlighting its costs. The renewal of China’s Most Favored Nation (MFN) trading status has been controversial ever since the Chinese government’s 1989 assault on pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square.

However, consistent with his predecessors since the 1970s, President Clinton argues that maintaining normal trade relations is the best way to integrate China further into the family of nations, promote American interests and ideals, and increase U. S. government influence with the Chinese government. In addition, if the United States were to revoke China’s normal trading status, it would jeopardize access to one of the world’s most rapidly growing emerging markets, one that already supports 170,000 American jobs and doubtless will support more in the years ahead (Favoring China 1997).

In fact, the United States is China’s largest export market. The U. S. trade deficit with China jumped 17 percent last year to $39. 5 billion, a larger imbalance than with any other country except Japan (Ibid. ). Experts agree that opening U. S. markets to China has indeed had a beneficial effect and that China is displaying a greater willingness to accept international rules (Favoring China 1997 and Friend or Foe 1997). However, U. S. policy makers are often caught between the above needs and their obligation to act as leaders by sending a signal to the international community when necessary.

Environmental degradation in China poses a threat not only to the Chinese people, but also to the global population as a whole. The state of China’s environment is of concern, particularly as there seems to be little hope for a reversal of current trends. Such trends include the enormous population pressures the country faces, the political problems involved in laying off the thousands of laborers who work in polluting factories, and the fact that despite official recognition of the magnitude of the problem.

Chinese environmental officials concede priority to economic development in the short to medium-term. The promotion of sustainable development in China must therefore be considered to be in the U. S. national interest. Is China’s Environment a U. S. National Interest? This is an issue that is not specific to United States-China relations, but one that is relevant to international relations in general though it is most often debated in the context of North-South relations.

Whether or not a specific problem should concern American policy makers depends on whether it has ramifications that transcend national borders. The creation of the Three Gorges Dam reservoir will spell the extinction of several known and, possibly, numerous undiscovered species of flora and fauna. Ecologists such as Paul Ehrlich have posited that the loss of even “minor” species could upset the delicate balance of ecosystems, leading to major ecological disruptions and sometimes greater losses further up the food pyramid.

Moreover, the loss of biodiversity also “deprives humanity of substances needed to produce new medicines, crop varieties and other products through biotechnology” (UN Chronicle 1997, 17). The weight of these arguments depends on the likelihood and extent to which these developments will transpire. But even if the above claims are accepted at face value, the true cost in economic and more subjective terms is impossible to measure. It is this uncertainty that makes it problematic to characterize environmental degradation in foreign countries as a U. S. national interest.

Put bluntly, the connection between the extinction of the river dolphin and U. S. national interests, broadly defined, is simply too tenuous to gain the support of policy makers and the public without spending a significant amount of political capital. Indeed, even within the United States it has been difficult to convince Americans that preserving the spotted owl was worth the loss of forestry jobs in Washington State. However, when environmental conditions in foreign countries impact surrounding nations or the global environment, the case for U. S. ervention is easier to make for several reasons.

First, the potential deleterious effects of environmental degradation on economic growth represent a threat to American export markets and the health of the nation’s economy. Acid rain caused by sulfur emissions from Chinese factories and households has caused billions of dollars of damage to Japan and South Korea’s forests. In order to mitigate the effects, these major markets for U. S. exports are forced to divert economic resources which could otherwise be used to build stronger economies or buy more American products (Esty 1997).

Second, the damage that China is inflicting on itself gives rise to similar concerns. Given that China is expected to be an engine of growth for the Asia Pacific region as well as the rest of the world in the next century, the drag on China’s economic growth that environmental degradation will bring has serious implications for the American economy. Third, Thomas Homer-Dixon has written extensively on how resource scarcities can lead to regional instability by spurring transnational migrations or enticing nations to attempt to expand their territories (Homer-Dixon 1994, 540).

In April 1996, U. S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher’s allusion to China’s “enormous environmental pressures” underscored fears in the region that resource scarcity within China translates into threat of war and conquest beyond its borders (A Greener China 1996). If such a conflict were to occur, American military and economic leadership would likely be required to bring about a peaceful resolution. What is ironic about the Three Gorges Dam debate is that the project is aimed partly at reducing China’s reliance on coal as an energy source.

Therefore, at first glance the position taken by the Clinton administration seems to contradict its interest in promoting Chinese efforts to clean up the environment. However, it is important to clarify that the basis of the administration’s policy decision rests on concerns about the questionable benefits and likely costs of the megaproject, rather than disagreement over the need for cleaner sources of energy.

Administratively, The Peoples Republic of China is made up of twenty-two provinces, five autonomous regions, and four centrally administered cities, and one Special Administrative Region. The Making of the Modern Chinese State The PRC is one of only a few countries in the world that is still a Communist party-state. This is a political system which the ruling Communist Party holds a monopoly on political power, claims the right to lead or control all government and social institutions, and proclaims allegiance (at least officially) to the ideology of Marxism-Leninism.

The PRC can be compared with other Communist party-states with which it shares or has shared many political and ideological features. Napoleon Bonaparte, emperor of France in the early nineteenth century, is said to have remarked Let China sleep. For when China wakes, it will shake the world. The growth of Chinas economy, since Deng Xiaoping began his market-oriented reforms in the late 1970s, has been called one of the centurys greatest economic miracles, which has, in turn, led to one of the biggest improvements in human welfare anywhere at any time.

During the same period, the average income of the Chinese people quadrupled, and although there are still many very poor people in China, more than 200 million have been lifted from living in absolute poverty to a level where they have a minimally adequate supply of food, clothing and shelter. The PRC by far the most important in terms of size and power. The underlying political and ideological principles of party-state organization are clearly laid out in Chinas current constitution.

The government of the PRC is organizationally and functionally distinct from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The power of the Communist Partyparticularly the nearly unchecked power of the top twenty-five or thirty leadersis at the heart of governance and policy-making in China. Party domination, however, does not mean that the system operates in a monolithic way. In fact, the system wriggles with politics of many kinds, formal and informal.

The CCP describes the government of the Peoples Republic as a socialist democracy, which it claims is superior to democracy in a capitalist country. The formal structures of the Chinese political system are designed more to extend state control of political life than to facilitate citizen participation in politics. Therefore, people make extensive use of their personal connections based on kinship, friendship, and other ties (guanxi) to help ease their contacts with the bureaucrats and party officials who wield such enormous power over so many aspects of their lives.

There are deep doubts about the ability of the CCP to continue to manage the economy effectively because of its reluctance to make even more fundamental changes, such as extending the market reforms to sectors of the economy that remain under state control, like banking and the production of steel and oil. Beyond money, the Internet is also spurring a sense of nationalism among many of the Net entrepreneurs. They think the Internet can help them draw level with the West. This is the first time we see a way we Chinese can catch up, says Jack Ma, head of Alibaba. m, an e-commerce site based in Hangzhou.

Economic reform in China has already created groups and processes, interests and ideas that are likely to become sources of pressure for more and faster political change. The experience of the newly industrializing countries and other developing countries suggest that such pressures are likely to intensify as the economy and society continue to modernize. Consequently, at some point in the not-too-distant future, the CCP may again face the challenge of the democratic idea.

Classical Chinese theory of mind is similar to Western “folk psychology” in that both mirror their respective background view of language. They differ in ways that fit those folk theories of language. The core Chinese concept is xin (the heart-mind). As the translation suggests, Chinese folk psychology lacked a contrast between cognitive and affective states ([representative ideas, cognition, reason, beliefs] versus [desires, motives, emotions, feelings]). The xin guides action, but not via beliefs and desires. It takes input from the world and guides action in light of it.

Most thinkers share those core beliefs. Herbert Fingarette argued that Chinese (Confucius at least) had no psychological theory. Along with the absence of belief-desire explanation of action, they do not offer psychological (inner mental representation) explanations of language (meaning). We find neither the focus on an inner world populated with mental objects nor any preoccupation with questions of the correspondence of the subjective and objective worlds. Fingarette explained this as reflecting an appreciation of the deep conventional nature of both linguistic and moral meaning.

He saw this reflected in the Confucian focus on li (ritual) nd its emphasis on sociology and history rather than psychology. The meaning, the very existence, of a handshake depends on a historical convention. It rests on no mental acts such as sincerity or intent. The latter may accompany the conventional act and give it a kind of aesthetic grace, but they do not explain it. Fingarette overstates the point, of course. It may not be psychologistic in its linguistic or moral theory, but Confucianism still presupposes a psychology, albeit not the familiar individualist, mental or cognitive psychology.

Its account of human function in conventional, historical society presupposes some ehavioral and dispositional traits. Most Chinese thinkers indeed appear to presuppose that humans are social, not egoistic or individualistic. The xin coordinates our behavior with others. Thinkers differed in their attitude toward this natural social faculty. Some thought we should reform this tendency and try harder to become egoists, but most approved of the basic “goodness” of people. Most also assumed that social discourse influenced how the heart-mind guides our cooperation.

If discourse programs the heart-mind, it must have a dispositional capacity to internalize the programming. Humans accumulate and ransmit conventional dao-s (guiding discoursesways). We teach them to our children and address them to each other. The heart-mind then executes the guidance in any dao it learns when triggered (e. g. , by the sense organs). Again thinkers differed in their attitude toward this shared outlook. Some thought we should minimize or eliminate the controlling effect of such conventions on human behavior.

Others focused on how we should reform the social discourse that we use collectively in programming each others xin. Typically, thinkers in the former group had some theory of the innate or hard-wired programming of the xin. Some in the latter camp had either a “blank page” or a negative view of the heart-minds innate patterns of response. For some thinkers, the sense organs delivered a processed input to the heart-mind as a distinction: salty and sour, sweet and bitter, red or black or white or green and so forth. Most had thin theories, at best, of how the senses contributed to guidance.

While it is tempting to suppose that they assumed the input was an amorphous flow of “qualia” that the heart-mind sorted into categories (relevant either to its innate or social programming). However, given the lack of analysis of the content of the ensory input, we should probably conservatively assume they took the nave realist view that the senses simply make distinctions in the world. We can be sure only that the xin did trigger reactions to discourse-relevant stimuli. Reflecting the theory of xin, the implicit theory of language made no distinction between describing and prescribing.

Chinese thinkers assumed the core function of language is guiding behavior. Representational features served that prescriptive goal. In executing guidance, we have to identify relevant “things” in context. If the discourse describes some behavior toward nes elder, one needs a way correctly to identify the elder and what counts as the prescribed behavior. Correct action according to a conventional dao must also take into account other descriptions of the situation such as urgent, normal, etc. These issues lay behind Confucian theories of “rectifying names. The psychological theory (like the linguistic) did not take on a sentential form.

Classical Chinese language had no “belief-grammar”, i. e. , forms such as X believes that P (where P is a proposition). The closest grammatical counterpart focuses on the term, not the sentence and point to the different function of xin. Where Westerners would say “He believes (that) it is good” classical Chinese would either use “He goods it” or “He, yi (with regard to) it, wei (deems:regards) good. ” Similarly zhi (to know) takes noun phrases, not sentences, as object.

The closest counterpart to propositional knowledge would be “He knows its being (deemed as) good. ” The xin guides action in the world in virtue of the categories it assigns to things, but it does not house mental or linguistic “pictures” of facts. Technically, the attitude was what philosophers a de re attitude. The “subject” was in the world not in the mind. The context of use picked out the intended item. The attitude consisted of projecting the mental category or concept on the actual thing. We distinguish this functional role best by talking about a disposition rather than a belief.

It is a disposition to assign some reality to a category. The requisite faculty of the heart-mind (or the senses) is the ability to discriminate or distinguish T from not-T, e. g. , good from bad, human being from thief. We might, alternately, think of Chinese belief and knowledge as predicate attitudes rather than propositional attitudes. Predicate attitudes are the heart-minds function. A basic judgment is, thus, neither a picture or representation of some metaphysically complex fact. Its essence is picking out what counts as X in the situation (where X is a term in the guiding discourse).

The context fixes the object and the heart-mind assigns it to a relevant category. Hence, Chinese folk theory places a (learned or innate) ability to make distinctions correctly in following a dao in the central place Western folk psychology places ideas. They implicitly understood correctness as conformity to the social-historical norm. One of the projects of some Chinese philosophers was trying to provide a natural or objective ground of dao. Western “ideas” are analogous to mental pictographs in a language of thought. The composite pictures formed out of these mental images (beliefs) were the mental counterparts of facts.

Truth was “correspondence” between the picture and the fact. Pictures play a role in Chinese folk theory of language but not of mind. Chinese understood their written characters as having evolved from pictographs. They had scant reason to think of grammatical strings of characters as “pictures” of anything. Chinese folk linguistics recognized that history and community usage determined the reference of the characters. They did not appeal to the pictographic quality or any associated mental image individuals might have. Language and conventions are valuable because they store inherited guidance.

The social-historical tradition, not individual psychology, grounds meaning. Some thinkers became skeptical of claims about the sages and the “constancy” of their guidance, but they did not abandon the assumption that public language guides us. Typically, they either advocated reforming the guiding discourse (dao) or reverting to “natural,” pre-linguistic behavior patterns. Language rested neither on cognition nor private, individual subjectivity. Chinese philosophy of mind played mainly an application (execution of instructions) role in Chinese theory of language.

Chinese theory of language centered on counterparts of reference or denotation. To have mastered a term was for the xin and senses working together to be able to distinguish or divide realities “correctly. ” Correctly was the rub because the standard of correctness was discourse. It threatened a regresswe need a discourse to guide our practical interpretation of discourse. Philosophy of mind played a role in various attempted solutions. Chinese philosophers mostly agreed (except for innatists) hat actual distinguishing would be relative to past training, experience, assumptions and situation.

However, they did not regard experience as a mental concept in the classic Western sense of the being a subjective or private content. An important concept in philosophy of mind was, therefore, de (virtuosity). One classic formulation identified de as embodied, inner dao. De though “inner,” was more a set of dispositions than a mental content. The link seemed to be that when we learn a daos content, it produces de. Good de comes from successful teaching of a dao. When you follow dao, you need not ave the discourse “playing” internally.

We best view it as the behavioral ability to conform to the intended pattern of actionthe path (performance dao). It would be “second nature. ” We may think of de, accordingly, as both learned and natural. We can distinguish Chinese thought from Indo-European thought, then, not only in its blending affective and cognitive functions, but also in its avoiding the nuts and bolts of Western mind-body analysis. Talk of “inner” and “outer” did distinguish the psychological from the social, but it did not mean inner was mental content. The xin has a physical and temporal location and consists of ispositions to make distinctions in guiding action.

It is not a set of inherently representational “ideas” (mental pictograms). Similarly, we find no clear counterpart to the Indo-European conception of the faculty of reason. Euclidean method in geometry and the formulation of the syllogism in logic informed this Indo-European concept. Absent this apparatus, Chinese thinkers characterized the heart-mind as either properly or improperly trained, virtuous, skilled, reliable, etc. Prima facie, however, these were social standards threatened circularity. The heart-mind required some kind of mastery of a body of practical knowledge.

Chinese thinkers explored norm realism mainly through an innatist strategy. Innatists sought to picture the heart-minds distinctions as matching “norms” or “moral patterns” implicit in the natural stasis or harmony of the world. Return to Outline Historical Developments: The Classical Period Confucius indirectly addressed philosophy of mind questions in his theory of education. He shaped the moral debate in a way that fundamentally influenced the classical conception of xin (heart-mind). Confucius discourse dao was the classical syllabus, including most notably history, poetry and ritual.

On one hand, we can think of these as training” the xin to proper performance. On the other, the question of how to interpret the texts into action seemed to require a prior interpretive capacity of xin. Confucius appealed to a tantalizingly vague intuitive ability that he called ren (humanity). A person with ren can translate guiding discourse into performance correctlyi. e. , can execute or follow a dao. Confucius left open whether ren was innate or acquired in studythough the latter seems more likely to have been his position. It was, in any case, the position of Chinas first philosophical critic, the anti-Confucian Mozi.

Again concern with hilosophy of mind was subordinate to Mozis normative concerns. He saw moral character as plastic. Natural human communion (especially our tendency to “emulate superiors”) shaped it. Thus, we could cultivate utilitarian behavioral tendencies by having social models enunciate and act on a utilitarian social discourse. The influence of social models would also determine the interpretation of the discourse. Interpretation takes the form of indexical pro and con reactionsshi (this:right:assent) and fei (not this:wrong:dissent).

The attitudes when associated with terms pick out the reality (object, action, etc. relevant to the discourse guidance. We thus train the heart-mind to make distinctions that guide its choices and thereby our behaviorspecifically in following a utilitarian symbolic guide. Utilitarian standards also should guide practical interpretation (execution or performance) of the discourse. At this point in Chinese thought, the heart-mind became the focus of more systematic theorizingmuch of it in reaction to Mozis issues. The moral issue and the threat of a relativist regress in the picture led to a nativist reaction.

On the one hand, thinkers wanted to imagine ways to free themselves from the implicit ocial determinism. On the other, moralists want a more absolute basis for ethical distinctions and actions. Several thinkers may have joined a trend of interest in cultivating the heart-mind. Mencius theory is the best known within the moralist trend. He analyzed the heart-mind as consisting of four natural moral inclinations. These normally mature just as seeds grows into plants. Therefore, the resulting virtues (benevolence, morality, ritual, and knowledge) were natural.

Mencius thus avoided having to treat the ren intuition as a learned product a social dao. It is a de that signals a natural dao. This view allowed Mencius to defend Confucian ritual indirectly against Mozis accusation that it relied on an optional and, thus, changeable tradition. Mencius strategy, however, presupposed that a linguistic dao could either distort or reinforce the heart-mind’s innate program. In principle, we do not need to prop up moral virtue educationally. Linguistic shaping, other than countering linguistic distortion, therefore, ran an unnecessary risk. It endangered the natural growth of the moral dispositions.

The shi (this:right:assent) and fei (not this:wrong:dissent) dispositions necessary for sage-like moral behavior should develop “naturally. His theory did not imply that we know moral theory at birth, but that they develop or mature as the physical body does and in response to ordinary moral situations. The heart-mind functions by issuing shi-fei (this-not this) directives that are right in the concrete situations in which we find ourselves. It does not need or generate ethical theory or hypothetical choices. The xins intuitions are situational and implicitly harmonious with nature.

A well-known advocate with the natural spontaneity or freedom motivation was the Taoist, Laozi. He analyzed the psychology of socialization at a different level. Learning names was training us to make distinctions and to have desires of what society considered the appropriate sort. Both the distinctions and the desires were “right” only according to the conventions of the language community. Learning language not only meant losing ones natural spontaneity, it was and subjecting oneself to control by a social-historical perspective. We allowed society to control our desires.

His famous slogan, wu-wei, enjoined us to avoid actions motivated by such socialized desires. We achieve that negative by forgetting socially instilled distinctionsby forgetting language! His mplicit ideal had some affinities with that of Mencius except that his conception of the “natural” realm of psychological dispositions was considerably less ambitious in moral terms. Interpreters usually suppose that he assumed there would be a range of natural desires left even if socialized ones were “subtracted. ” These would be enough to sustain small, non-aggressive, agrarian villages.

In them, people would lack the curiosity even to visit neighboring villages. This “primitivism” still requires that there is a natural level of harmonious impulses to action, but not nearly enough to sustain Mencius unified moral empire. The LATER MOHISTS became skeptical of the neutral status of these allegedly “natural” heart-mind states. They noted that even a thief may claim that his behavior was natural. They watered down the conventionalism of Mozi by appealing to objectively accessible similarities and differences in nature. Our language ought to reflect these clusters of similarity.

They did little epistemology especially of the senses, but supposedly, like Mozi, would have appealed to the testimony ordinary people relying on their “eyes and ears. ” Others (See ZHUANGZI) insisted that any apparent patterns of similarity and difference were always perspectival and elative to some prior purpose, standards or value attitude. Linguistics did shape heart-mind attitudes but neither reliably or accurately carves the world into its real parts. The Later Mohists had given a cluster of definitions of zhi (to know). One of these seemed close to consciousnessor rather to point to the lack of any such concept.

Zhi was the capacity to know. In dreaming the zhi did not zhi and we took (something) as so. They analyzed the key function of the heart-mind as the capacity to discriminate linguistic intention. Zhuangzi takes a step beyond Laozi in his theory of emotions. Zhuangzi discusses the passions nd emotions that were raw, pre-social inputs from reality. He suggested a pragmatic attitude toward themwe cannot know what purpose they have, but without them, there would be no reference for the “I. ” Without the ‘I’, there would be neither choosing nor objects of choice.

Like Hume, he argued that while we have these inputs and feel there must be some organizing “true ruler,” we get no input (qing) from any such ruler. We simply have the inputs themselves (happiness, anger, sorrow, joy, fear). We cannot suppose that the physical heart is such a ruler, because it is no more natural than the other organs and joints of the body. Training and history condition a hearts judgments. Ultimately, even Mencius shi-fei (this-not this) are input to the xin. Our experience introduces them relative to our position and past assumptions. They are not objective or neutral judgments.

XUNZI also concentrated on issues related to philosophy of mind though in the context of moral and linguistic issues. He initiated some important and historically influential developments in the classical theory. His most famous (and textually suspect) doctrine is “human nature is evil. ” While he clearly wanted to distance himself from Mencius, the slogan at best obscures the deep affinity etween their respective views of human nature and mind. Xunzi seems to have drawn both from the tradition advocating cultivating heart-mind and from the focused theory of language.

This produced a tense hybrid theory that filled out the original Confucian picture on how conventions and language program the heart-mind. Xunzi made the naturalism explicit. Human guiding discourse takes place in the context of a three-tier universetian (heaven-nature) di (earth-sustenance) and ren (the social realm). He gave humans a special place in the chain of nature,’ but not based on reason. Animals shared the capacity or zhi (knowledge). What distinguishes humans is their yi (morality) which is grounded on the ability to bian (distinguish).

Presumably, the latter ability is unique among animals with knowledge because it is short-hand for the ability to construct and abide by conventionsconventional distinctions or language. One of Xunzis naturalistic justifications for Confucian conventional rituals is economic. Ritual distinctions guide peoples desires so that society can manage scarcity. Only those with high status will learn to seek scarce goods. His departure from Mencius thus seems to lie in seeing human morality as more nformed or “filled-out” by historical conventional distinctions. These are the products of reflection and artifice, not nature.

However, in other ways Xunzi seems to edge closer to Mencius. He also presents ritual as part of the structure of the worldimplicit in the heaven-earth natural context. One natural line of explanation is this: while thought creates the correct conventions, nature sets the concrete conditions of scarcity and human traits that determine what conventions will be best for human flourishing. Return to Outline Historical Developments: Han Cosmology The onset of the philosophical ark age, brought on by Qin Dynasty repression followed by Han dynasty policies resulted in a bureaucratic, obscurant Confucian orthodoxy.

The Qin thus buried the technical ideas informing philosophy of mind along with the active thinkers who understood them. The ontology of the eclectic scholasticism that emerged was essentially religious and superstitious. It was, however, overtly materialist (assuming Qi (ether, matter) is material). So the implicit philosophy of mind of the few philosophically inclined thinkers during the period tended toward a vague materialism. The Han further developed the five-element (five phases) ersion of materialism. They postulated a correlative pentalogy linking virtually every system of classification that occurred to them.

The scheme included the organs of the body and the virtues. Interpretation and analysis of “correlative” reasoning is a controversial subject. From here, the mental correlations look more like a frequency selection from the psychological lexicon than a product of philosophical reflection, observation or causal theory. The Yin-yang analysis also had mental correlates. Following Xunzi, Orthodox Han Confucians tended to treat qing (reality:desires) as yin (typically egative). The yang (value positive) counterpart was xing (human moral nature).

The most important development of the period was the emergence a compromise Confucian view of minds role in morality. It eventually informed and dominated the scholastic Neo-Confucianism of the much later Sung to Qing dynasties. The small book known as the Doctrine of the Mean gave it an influential formulation. It presents the heart-mind as a homeostasis-preserving input output device. The heart-mind starts in a state of tranquillity. The account leaves open whether this is a result of ideally structured moral input, esolution of inner conflicts, or the absence of (distorting) content.

Xunzis view of the empty, unified and still mind seems the proximate ancestor of the latter aspect of the view. The vagueness, conveniently, makes Mencius doctrines fit it as well. The input is a perturbation from the outer world. The output, the heart-minds action-guiding response, restores harmony to the world and the inner state to tranquillity. If the inner state prior to the input is not tranquil, the response will not restore harmony to the real situation. Han Confucianism filled out this cosmic view of this black-box interaction etween heart-mind and world harmony using qi materialism.

Qi is a rather more a blend of energy and matter than pure mattertranslations such as “life-force” bring out an essential connection with vitality. This makes it more appropriate for a cosmology that links the active heart-mind with the changing world. Qi was the single constituting element of spirits and ghosts as well. Wang Chungs skeptical, reductive application of qi theory focused on shen (spirit-energy). He did not view its consequences for heart-mind as particularly iconoclastic. It still lacked a notion of “consciousness” independent of zhi (know).

Our zhi, he argued, stops when we are asleep and so almost certainly it does when we are dead. ) His arguments that nature had no intentional purposes illustrated his reductive behaviorismif it has neither eyes nor ears, then it cannot have zhi (purposes or intentions). This argument would hardly make sense if he had the familiar Western concept of consciousness. Similarly, he argues that the five virtues are in the five organs so when the organs are dead and gone, the virtues disappear with them.

Return to Outline Historical Developments: Buddhist Philosophy of Mind The next developments are elated to the introduction of Buddhist mental concepts into China. Most accounts credit a movement dubbed “Neo-Taoism” with “paving the way” for this radical change in philosophy of mind. Wangbis Neo-Taoist system was explicitly a cosmology more than a theory of mind, but interpretations tend to read it epistemically. Wangbi addressed the metaphysical puzzle of the relation of being and non-being. (See YOU-WU) He postulated non-being as the “basic substance. ” Non-being produced being.

He dubbed this obscure relationship as “substance and function. ” Interpretations almost inevitably explain this on the analogy to Kants Noumenon and Phenomenon. As noted, Wangbi had few epistemological interests, but the analysis did have implications for heart-mind theory. He applied the metaphysical scheme to his Confucian slogan”Sage within, king without. ” The mind was empty “within” while the behaviors were in perfect conformity with the Confucian ritual dao. This tilts the Taoist tradition toward the “emptiness” reading of the black-box analysis of heart-mind.

Wangbi also placed li (principle) in a more central explanatory position. This paved the way for its use in translating Buddhisms sentence or law-like dharma. It played roles in both Buddhist epistemology and theory of mind. In sparse pre-Han usage, li was objective tendencies in thing-kinds. (Intuitionists and naturalists took them to be the valid norm for that kindspecies relative bits of dao. ) Wangbi gave it a more essentialist reading in the context of the Book of Changes. He postulated a li guiding the mixtures and transformations of yin and yang.

One should be able to bypass the complexity of the system by isolating and understanding its li. Buddhism introduced revolutionary changes into Chinese heart-mind conceptual scheme. The original Indo-European religion probably originated the familiar Western phenomenalism (consciousness, experience-based mentalism). Indian philosophy came complete with the familiar Western sentential analyses, mental content and cognitive emphasis (belief and knowing-that). It even mimicked the subject-predicate syllogism and the familiar epistemic and metaphysical subjective-objective dualism.

It introduced a semantic (eternal) truth predicate into Chinese thought along with a representational view of the function of both mind and language. Reason/intellect and emotion/desire formed a basic opposition in Buddhist sychological analysis. An inner idea-world parallels (or replaces) the ordinary world of objects. Soul and mind are roughly interchangeable and familiar arguments for immortality suggest both metaphysical dualism and mental transcendence or superiority over the physical. It conceptually links reality (knowledge, reason) to permanence and appearance (illusion, experience) to change.

A universal chain of causation was a central explanatory device and a mark of dependence and impermanence. Two caveats are in order, however. First, although Buddhism introduced a dualist conceptual scheme, many schools arguably) denied the dualism so formulated and rejected any transcendent self. Second, it is unclear how well the philosophy of mind was generally understood and whether much of it actually “took” in China. One of the early and notoriously unsuccessful schools was the “Consciousness only” school (translated as “Only Heart-mind”) which translated the idealism of Yogacara Buddhism.

The Yogacara analysis was Hume-like in denying that anything linked the infinitesimal “moments of awareness” into a real self. Scholars tend to blame its demise, however, as much on its objectionable moral features (its alleged Hinayana or elitist failure to uarantee universal salvation) as on its conceptual innovations. The most successful schools were those that seemed to eschew theory of any kindlike Zen (Chan) or Pure Land Buddhismor those that opted for intuitive, mystical simplicity (Tian Tai and Hua Yen).

The most important conceptual legacy of Buddhism, therefore, seems to be the changed role and importance of the character li (principle). In Buddhism it served a wide range of important sentential and mental functions. It facilitated the translation of law, truth, and reason. Neo-Confucianism would take it over (with otoriously controversial implications) as key concept in its philosophy of mind. Return to Outline Historical Developments: Neo-Confucianism Neo-Confucianism is a Western name for a series of schools in which philosophy of mind played a central role.

Scholars (somewhat controversially) present these schools as motivated by an anti-foreignism that sought to resurrect indigenous classical systems. These had lain dormant for six-hundred odd years when the freshness of Buddhism started to attract the attention of China’s intellectuals. Resurrecting Confucianism required providing it with an alternative to Buddhist etaphysics. For this, they drew on ch’i metaphysics, the black-box homeostasis preserving analysis of heart-mind, Wang Pi’s and Buddhism’s li and Mencius’ classical theory of the inherent goodness of heart-mind.

The intricacies of Neo-Confucian systems are too rich to analyze in detail here. The earliest versions focused on the notion of qi linkage between the heart-mind and the world influenced by our action. They characterized the tranquil state of the black-box as void. The school of li criticized that analysis as too Zen-like. (This was a typical and damning charge to participants in this movement, lthough a Zen period in ones development of thought was a common pattern among Neo-Confucians. ) The li school insisted that any adequate account of heart-mind had to give it an original moral content.

It did this by postulating an interdependent and inseparable dualism of li and qi. The li permeates the heart and all of reality, which is composed of qi. The most tempting (and common) elaboration uses the Platonic distinction of form and content, but that analysis teeters on the edge of incoherence. The school fell back on dividing the human mind from some transcendental or metaphysical Tao-mind. This made it dubious as a theory of mind at allin the ordinary sense. It essentially became a metaphysics in which heart-mind was a cosmic force.

One way of understanding the motivation that drove the otherwise puzzling metaphysical gymnastics links philosophy of mind and ethics. Neo-Confucians were searching for the metaphysical system such that anyone so viewing the cosmos and one’s place in it would reliably do what was right. The goal was having the metaphysical outlook of the sage. The criterion of right and wrong was that the sage’s mind would so judge it. If we could replicate the outlook, we would be age-like in our attitudesincluding both beliefs and motivations. The effect on motivation and behavior was more important than the theoretical coherence of the system.

The complexity of moral choice and human motivation required so many perturbations into their account of the proposed system that it became an almost infinitely flexible rationalization for intuitionism. Mencian optimism about innate heart-mind dispositions proved an uncomfortable legacy. If human nature and the heart-mind are innately and spontaneously moral, it was unclear why we require such mental gymnastics to cultivate and condition the dispositions. They ortrayed the li as inherently good in all things, but somehow humans, alone in all of nature, might fail to conform to its own natural norms.

The attempt to explain this via the li qi dualism flounders on the metaphysical principle that the dualism pervades all things. Despite this well known (and intractable) Confucian problem of evil, the school again became the Medieval orthodoxy. Office holding required being able to parrot the view in considerable detail to show their moral character. The school of Heart-mind was a rebellion against that orthodoxy. We best understand this rival as a species of normative, objective idealism. It saw the actual heart-mind as li and therefore inherently good.

The xin projects that li onto the world in the act of categorizing and dividing it into types. Thus our normative, (phenomenal) world is good but that good is a function of the mind. Moral categorization and action are a simultaneous and combined responses of the heart-mind to the perturbations or the disharmonies we encounter. The analysis of mind is functionalthere is no goodness of the mind separate from the goodness of its categorizing and acting. Knowing is acting. The school of heart-mind somewhat gingerly accepted the implication of their Mencian heritage. There is no evil.

I say “gingerly” because whether one should formulate or teach this conclusion or not is itself a choice that the mind must assess for its contextual value. In itself, as it were, the heart-mind is beyond good and evil. Others, hence, criticized school of heart-mind was for its own Zen-like implications. Any moderately clever student could figure out that whatever he chose to do was right (c. f. , Zhuangzis initial criticism’s of Mencian idealism). They, in turn, criticized the Buddhist character of their rival’s assumptions that some kind of state of mind (enlightenment, realization) would agically result in sagehood.

The moralistic name-calling of this inter-Confucian debate sapped further development of theory of mind. That coupled with its irrational optimism in the face of growing awareness of the vulnerability and weakness of China to resist Western and Japanese military and political power resulted first in mildly more materialistic and utilitarian systems. Eventually intellectuals developed a wholesale interest in the next Indo-European thought invasion, which took the form of Marxism. Maoist theory of mind was an unstable mixture of Marxist economic and materialist reductionism and traditional Chinese optimism.

The right political attitude (typically that of the part member) would give good communists spectacular moral power and infallible situational intuitions about how to solve social problems. Again, the obvious failure in the face of irrational theoretical optimism has produced a general antipathy to idealizations. One can guess that the next phase, like the Buddhist phase, will be one of borrowing and blending. However, the current skepticism about the general outlines of folk psychology in the West and its essentially alien character probably will keep Chinese theory of heart-mind distinctively Chinese.

Propaganda in China during the Cultural Revolution took on many forms; there were mass Red Guard demonstrations in Tianamen Square in support of Mao Zedong, pictures of Mao were put up in every conceivable location from restaurants to the wallpaper in nurseries, and pamphlets and books of Mao’s teachings were distributed to every Chinese citizen. One of these propaganda publications Quotations from Chairman Mao which later became known as the Little Red Book contained quotes from Mao Zedong and was distributed to every Chinese citizen.

The history of the Red Book provides one of the best ways in which to nalyze Chinese propaganda during the Cultural Revolution and see the ways in which the Chinese government was able to produce and effectively indoctrinate the Chinese people with Mao Zedong Thought. Official Chinese magazines from the period of 1967 to 1970 are filled with many pictures of citizens holding, reading, and memorizing the Red Book.

This proposal will trace the rise and fall of images of the Red Book in the official Chinese publication China Reconstructs. This proposal will use a graphical analysis of pictures in this publication from 1966 to 1973 to show that propaganda was not just a tool of the Communist party but also a reflection of internal power struggles within the party during the Cultural Revolution. The Red Book was written several years before it became the object of national adoration and a tool for the Cultivation of Mao’s personality Cult.

The history of the Red Book and its meteoric rise from a hand book for military recruits to compulsory reading for all Chinese citizens, is closely tied to its developer Lin Biao’s rise to power. Lin Biao was born in 1907 and was fourteen years younger then Mao; he joined the communist party in 1925 and until the communists captured control of China was at various times in charge of esistance forces, and armies of communist soldiers. When the communists took control in 1949 Lin Biao was behind Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, Chen Yun, and Deng Xiaoping in rank (Yan and Gao, 1996: 179).

But eighteen years later during the height of the Cultural Revolution Lin Biao by winning favor with Mao by publishing and championing the Red Book and the Cult of Mao became second only to the Chairman in power and position (Ming-Le, 1983: 80). In 1959 Peng Dehua was dismissed as minister of defense and Lin Biao was appointed in his place. At an armed forces meeting for high cadres during September of that year Lin Biao, energetically started promoting the Cult of Mao saying, “Learning the writings of comrade Mao Zedong is the shortcut to learning Marxism-Leninism.

Chairman Mao’s writings are easy to learn and can be put to use immediately. Diligent work will pay dividends many fold. ” (Yan and Gao, 1996: 182) His references to “shortcut” and “quick dividends” in his speech went unnoticed at the time as few foresaw the effects of creating a Cult around Mao. But looking back on the Cultural Revolution and Lin Biao, we can see his using the Cult of Mao was indeed a shortcut that produced huge dividends both for imself and for Mao.

Mao to the Chinese people was a symbol sovereignty and the construction of socialism; to them praise for Mao was fitting with his symbolic role in society. Starting in 1959 Lin Biao in front of military audiences in order to help buildup support for the Cult of Mao used such phrases as, “the dire necessity of acquiring Mao Zedong’s thought,” “to study the writings of Mao Zedong with questions in mind is to shoot arrows with target in sight,” “we must arm our minds with Mao Zedong’s thought” (Yan an Gao, 1996: 181).

Lin Biao’s goal of building up both himself and the Cult of Mao lead him in September of 960 to pass a resolution at the meeting of the Military Commission, which called for more political education among the armed forces (Yan and Gao, 1996: 181) Mao Zedong Thought is the compass for the Chinese people’s revolution and socialist construction, the powerful ideological weapon against imperialism, and the powerful ideological weapon against revisionism and dogmatism….. aise high the red banner of Mao Zedong Thought, go further and mobilize the minds of all officers and soldiers with Mao Zedong Thought, and resolve to make sure that Mao Zedong Thought, and resolve to make sure that Mao Zedong Thought is in ommand in all phases of work… Really learn by heart the Mao Zedong Thought! Read Chairman Mao’s books, listen to Chairman Mao’s words, follow Chairman Mao’s directives, and serve as Chairman Mao’s good soldiers! Shortly after the passage of the resolution by Lin Biao, the fourth volume of the selected works of Mao Zedong was published.

On the occasion of it being sold to the public Lin Biao wrote an article calling upon all people in the military to read and study the works of Chairman Mao and dedicate to memory Mao Zedong Thought (Yan and Gao, 1996: 183). On April 1964 Lin Biao direct the military presses to publish a election of quotes from Mao in a Little Red Book. The book titled Quotations From Chairman Mao was aimed at providing military recruits a shortened version of Maoist thought (Yan and Gao, 1996: 183). Military recruits before the publication of the Red Book were encouraged to study the Selected Works of Mao Zedong.

But this set of books had grown so large (it’s four volumes contained over fifteen hundred pages) many of the military’s recruits who were from peasant backgrounds were unable to read its complicated articles. The Little Red Book in contrast with its hand picked quotes and introduction by Lin Biao was hort with easy to read quotes. Before the publishing of the Red Book the study of the Selected Works of Mao Zedong greatly increased in the military this was in large part due to the encouragement and directives issued by Lin Biao.

In 1961 Lin Biao while inspecting a contingent of troops said that the works of Chairman Mao Zed ong, were a guide to those in the military, “Every lesson in political education must use the works of Chairman Mao Zedong as an ideological guide. ” (Yan and Gao, 1996: 183) Lin Biao also directed the military press to publish sections from the Red Book in the Liberation Army Daily the official ublication of the PLA (People’s Liberation Army).

The Red Book provided many of the military recruits who were mostly uneducated peasants with a grounding in Maoist thought. The quotes selected in the Red Book such as, ” Carry on the workers struggle, down with rightist revisionism” were sufficient vague as to allow recruits to draw from the Red Book what they wanted to. Lin Biao’s efforts to promote the study of Maoist thought were done to win favor with Mao and increase his position in the party (Tsou, 1986: 49). Lin Biao’s cultivation of the Cult of Mao Zedong soon earned him Mao’s notice.

During a meeting in 1961 Mao applauded Lin Biao’s work in the armed forces saying, “Recently comrade Lin Biao inspected the forces as far down as the company level and showed understanding of a good many things, including the problems of construction among our forces, and he made very good suggestions about various tasks of construction. ” (Yan and Gao, 1996: 182) Lin Biao feeling that his work at publicizing Mao’s teachings was paying off redoubled his efforts at promoting Mao Zedong Thought.

He insisted that quotes from Mao Zedong could be used to accomplish tasks within the military and made the Red Book equired reading for all in the military (Tsou, 1986:50). In January of 1962 the Part Central held an enlarged work session called a seven thousand person meeting. This meeting was aimed at rectifying the mistakes of The Great Leap Forward, and to promote the economy. A large majority at the meeting criticized Mao Zedong; but Lin Biao who believed that his future was inextricably linked to that of Mao gave one of the lone speeches in support of Mao (Yan and Gao, 1996: 182).

Lin Biao said at the conference that the reason The Great Leap Forward had not a success was because the dictates of Chairman Mao had not been followed closely enough. After the economy started to improve in 1963 and Mao gained back wide support Mao looked back and remembered that Lin Biao was one of the few who had stood by him and did not criticize him during the Party Central meeting. This event shows how Lin Biao was a shrewd political thinker who saw that his future was connected with that of Mao and winning Mao’s approval.

By 1962 Lin Biao’s chief tool at achieving this objective was the promotion of Mao Zedong Thought (Dutt and Dutt, 1970: 63). After May of 1961 the Liberation Army Daily followed Lin Biao’s irective and printed selection’s from the Selected Works of Mao Zedong. By May of 1964 with a further directive from Lin Biao the general publication department of the Liberation Army, edited and published the Red Book accompanied by the publication of the selected reader of the workers of Mao suggested by Lin Biao (Yan and Gao, 1996: 183).

The Red Book had an inscription on its cover written in calligraphy by Lin Biao that read, “Study Chairmen Mao’s writings, follow his teachings, and act accordingly” (Kraus, 1991: 109). The fact that the inscription on the Red Book was in Lin Biao’s handwriting was significant in hat it symbolized the connection between the Red Book, Lin Biao, and the Cult of Mao. Both of these publications were published in large quantities and distributed among the armed forces.

There now was a fervor for the studying of works by Mao in military ranks, illiterate soldiers were able to recite long passages from memory and military troops studied the Red Book during their breaks. With such a backdrop Lin Biao recognized that the time was right for increasing his position within the party. The cultivation of the Cult of Mao had support from Mao Zedong and when he started the Cultural Revolution in August of 966 Mao saw that Lin Biao’s thought education in the military could be applied to the whole nation (Rodzinski, 1988:96).

The period before the Cultural Revolution provides some very important insights into the development of the Red Book and of Lin Biao’s connection to the Red Book. In the period before August of 1966 the Red Book was not read by those outside of the military. A graphical analysis of pictures before 1967 shows that the Red Book was not a widely used method of propaganda as it did not appear in many pictures and the pictures it did appear in were of soldiers in the PLA.

Although studying Maoist thought was important during the period prior to the Cultural Revolution in society as a whole it was not very important. There are several reasons: First, there was no reason to Cultivate the Cult of Mao Zedong Thought during this time, Mao prior to 1966 was not trying to lead any mass movements in which he would need popular support. The Great Leap Forward and the anti-rightist campaign’s came during times in which Mao was powerful within the party so he did not need wide spread support outside of the central command.

Second, Mao prior to the Cultural Revolution was more nterested in promoting communist economics then ideology. Mao promoted The Great Leap Forward which was not a ideological campaign but instead an economic campaign to promote industrialization (Rodzinski, 1988:74). And in the period from 1961 to 1965 Mao was chiefly concerned with getting the economy back on track following the disastrous Great Leap Forward. But by 1966 the economy of China was back on track and Mao had once more gained back the support of the central leaders of the communist party.

The Cultural Revolution launched in 1966 lasted depending on the author ntil 1971 or 1976 and was initiated by Mao Zedong to renew the spirit of the Chinese Revolution. Fearing that China would develop along the lines of the Soviet model and concerned about his own place in history, Mao threw China into turmoil in a monumental effort to reverse what Mao saw as a rightist movement within China. During the 1960’s tensions with Russia increased and Mao became convinced that the Russian Revolution had stalled and become rightist, Mao feared that China was following the same path (Yan and Gao, 1996: 7).

Mao theorized that to keep China from becoming social stratified and elitist the rocess of continuos revolution had to be initiated by the government. To Mao the Cultural Revolution that he initiated had four goals: to replace party members with leaders more faithful to his thinking; to reenergize the Chinese Communist party and Purge the rightists; to provide China’s youth with a revolutionary experience; and to change society such that specific systems such as education, healthcare, and cultural systems such as opera and music became less elitist (Mitchell and Kua, 1975: 465).

Mao launched the Cultural Revolution at the Eleventh Plenum of the Eighth Central Committee in August 1966. In the following weeks Mao shut down he schools in order to allow young people to take part in the revolution (Mitchell and Kua, 1975: xii). Mao also established a national mobilization of the countries youth. They were organized into Red Guard groups and encouraged to attack all tradition values, symbols, and leaders who were rightist or bourgeois.

Mao believed that the attacks would both provide the youth with a revolutionary experience thus continuing the cycle of continuos revolution and they would strengthen the party by removing the rightist elements. Mao also saw the Cultural Revolution as a way to strengthen his own political base because the Red Guards acted to remove all who opposed Mao Zedong. The movement quickly escalated; intellectuals party officials, teachers, and the elderly were both physically attacked and verbally abused made to wear dunce caps in the streets and to denounce themselves.

Temples, restaurants, and all signs of old values were ransacked by the Red Guard youths. The Cultural revolution put middle school and high school students in charge of the nation and like a version of Lord of the Flies the nation fell into anarchy and paralysis The Cultural Revolution also lead to changes within the structure of the communist party. Before the Cultural Revolution Liu Shaoqi was Mao Zedong’s designated successor, but during the early stages of the Cultural Revolution Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping and many others who Mao deemed as being rightists were removed from the party.

In their place Mao installed those who had been most loyal to him in the past; one of those men was Lin Biao (Dutt and Dutt, 1970: 80). Mao rightly saw that the best way to provide both direction for the Red Guards and to make himself immune from their attacks upon party official would be to foster a personality Cult. Thus under the guidance of Lin Biao who after Liu Shaoqi was removed; become the successor to Mao Lin Biao helped foster a personality Cult for Mao. Lin Biao used the same types of techniques that he used in the army to help foster this Cult of Mao.

Lin Biao used the same organization to disseminate propaganda that he had devised for the Army. Lin Biao continued to head the army till his death in 1971 but his role was expanded as he became the high priest of the Cult of Mao (Yan and Gao, 1996: 334). The reading of the Red Book was encouraged by both Mao, party directives written by Lin Biao, Chen Boda, and Kang Sheng who during the Cultural Revolution became Mao’s closest advisors. All three of these advisors worked tirelessly to promote the Cult of Mao because they saw it as their way to curry favor with Mao Zedong and their efforts met with whole hearted approval.

Mao in an interview near the end of the Cultural Revolution commented that Krushchev could have avoided loosing his power if he had created an appropriate Cult for himself (Yan and Gao, 1996: 313). Mao relied on the power of propaganda to enlarge his Cult during the Cultural Revolution. The Red Book became his most powerful weapon. Quotations from the Red Book replaced the usual front page section entitled today’s mportant news in the People’s Daily. Various other newspapers and journals increased their coverage of Mao Zedong printing his speeches, pictures, and quotes.

Some even retold stories of his days fighting the Japanese and the KMT (Yan and Gao, 1996: 215). The major newspapers in June of 1966 started writing editorials and stories encouraging the public to study the thought of Chairman Mao by reading . On June 6 both the Liberation Army Daily and the People’s Daily simultaneously published a front page article calling on the Chinese people to study Mao Zedong Thought and reading Selected Works of Mao Zedong. The headline ead, “Raise high the Great Red Flag of Mao Zedong, Carry to the end the great proletariat revolution. (Yan and Gao, 1996: 215) It was no coincidence that the Liberation Army Daily and the People’s Daily both carried the same story about increasing Mao Zedong thought study. It symbolized the rise in power of Lin Biao who with the start of the Cultural Revolution and the expulsion of Liu Shaoqi had increased his power within the communist party. Lin Biao’s ideas of education and indoctrination into Maoist thought had with the publishing of the story in the People’s Daily in June of 1966 moved from the army to all of China.

From this point on until he lost favor with Mao in 1970 Lin Biao became the cheerleader of the Cult of Mao directing the national frenzy that enveloped China with its adoration of Mao Zedong (Dutt and Dutt, 1970: 80). Under the leadership of Lin Biao the leading newspapers in China printed stories urging readers to read the works of Mao. As of yet the only books available to the public was the four volume long Selected Works of Mao Zedong; the Red Book had not yet become available to the pubic.

In the fall of 1966 the People’s Daily published such headlines as, ‘Mao Zedong thought is the red sun ithin our bosom,” and stories in newspapers were filled with such lines as, “Chairman Mao’s books are not gold, but are more precious then gold; not steel, but stronger then steel. ” (Yan and Gao, 1996: 183) Pictures from this time depicted happy Chinese citizens reading pamphlets by Mao such as the, “Man Who Moved The Mountain. ” But as of yet the number of pictures in 1966 that pictured Red Books was limited and only included members of the armed forces.

But the stories in the newspapers and other propaganda put out by the government such as radio broadcasts stirred up a great fever in support of Mao and the study of Mao Zedong Thought. On August 12 following the Eleventh Plenum of the Eighth party congress copies of The Selected Works of Mao Zedong were distributed at major universities before they were shut down to prepare for the Cultural Revolution. During the rest of 1966 newspapers reported daily on the sale on The Selected Works of Mao Zedong.

The government lowered the price of the set of books to two yuan so that every person could posses a copy of the Selected Works. Sales were brisk then starting in January of 1967 Lin Biao made Quotations From Chairman Mao available to the public. Everyone immediately wanted to buy it. Group study sessions of the book became common. At many Red Guard rallies during the next several years Red Guard troops set whole pages of the book to song (Yan and Gao, 1996: 248). Lin Biao ordered the presses of China to print millions of copies of the Red Book and distribute them to the public.

The Chinese media encouraged the reading of the Red Book by printing stories extolling the virtues of those who committed the book to memory. (Yan and Gao, 1996: 249) Granny Liu spent days and nights studying the works of Chairman Mao. When she forgot, she called other to teach her. Granddaughter Yuhzen slept with er and would thus be awakened ten times a night. Even though the granddaughter could not sleep well, Granny Liu would say endearingly to her, “Yuhzen, one more word you can teach granny is one more measure of loyalty to Chairman Mao and one more bullet for Liu Shaoqi. “….

Granny Liu also eagerly disseminated Mao Zedong Thought. For more than sixty years she, had not known how to sing. Now, learning from her daughter and granddaughter, she sang every where…. Proudly Granny Liu said, “This old women can’t really handle a tune. But what I sing is my feeling for Chairman Mao. When I disseminate Mao Zedong Thought, the more I sing the ounger I get. ” Thus from January of 1967 to Lin Biao’s death and the end of the Cultural Revolution everyone in China it seemed wanted to be a Granny Liu; a person who worked for the greater glory of Mao Zedong and China.

The Red Book provided the Chinese people both with a basic although cryptic introduction to Maoist thought and it also provided them with a connection to their leader. Lin Biao was able to successfully indoctrinate the entire nation not just in an idolization of Mao but also in a frenzied studying of his quotes. The period from 1966 to 1971 is marked by Chinese publications filled ith pictures of Chinese citizens studying the Red Books on communes, in fields, in classrooms, at rallies, and at ad-hoc study groups that met from along the Pearl River in the south of China to the plains of Tibet.

The number of pictures in China Reconstructs of people holding Mao books increased from just a trickle prior to 1967 to almost fifty percent of all at the Height of the Cultural Revolution. Along with this upward trend in the number of Mao books was an increasing number of flattering articles about Lin Biao. One article in 1968 called him both a valiant fighter for the revolution and a loyal follower of Mao. The irony of this quote was probably missed by most readers at the time but looking back it was Lin Biao who created the Cult of Mao to further his own goals within the communist party and not Lin Biao’s goals of helping Mao.

The percentage of pictures of the Red Book and articles about Lin Biao during this time reflected not just the frenzy over the Cult of Mao in China but also the power of Lin Biao it was through his work that the Red Book became a talisman for the Chinese people. Chinese citizens read the Red Book because of the appeal and aura that surrounded it. The Red Book connected individual Chinese citizens with their eader. It enabled the average citizen who would never meet Mao in their lifetime to possess a piece of him and his words.

During the Cultural Revolution Mao became a god in the eyes of the Chinese people no criticism of him could be tolerated, nor the slightest deviation from his instruction permitted. Every word he uttered was taken as truth he became in effect a living Buddha, and like Buddha his writings became like sutra’s. His quotes like passages from the sutra’s were memorized, chanted, set to song, and reproduced on billboards and on the beams of houses. (Rodzinski, 1988:121) The Red Book became during the Cultural Revolution a holy sutra carried by every citizen everywhere and studied endlessly.

Some would say that the Red Book became the bible of the Cultural Revolution but this theory has several flaws. First, if this is true then the Mao would be the Jesus Christ of his time, but Mao unlike Jesus reached unquestioned power during his lifetime and unlike Jesus had no one above him; Mao was god not the son of god in China. Second, the Red Book is not parallel to the bible in its symbolism. The bible is not committed to memory by most Christians unlike the sutras which Buddhists learn long passages from. Mao followed in the footsteps of the Buddhist framework of religious organization.

Under the Cultural Revolution Buddhism and Confucianism were wiped out, Red Guards destroyed Buddhist temples and tortured monks; but in this religious vacuum Mao placed himself as Buddha and his writings as Sutra’s. The Red Book during the Cultural Revolution provided a semblance of structure and unity in the chaos of the time. Even though rival Red Guard factions frequently clashed and the nation was thrown into turmoil the Red Book acted as a bond between the Chinese; they were all followers of Mao even as heir nation dissolved into anarchy.

The Red Book provided a framework in which for people to criticize others and also a bond between citizens, the party, Red Guards, and Mao. The study of the Red Book also provided a de-facto type of education while the schools were shut down. People learned to read in study groups while learning the Red Book’s quotes. In these ways the Red Book was valuable in that it created a type of order out of the chaos of the Cultural Revolution.

One of the fascinating things about the Red Book was that nearly ever Chinese citizen possessed one but only a few of them could read it. This was one f the things that made the Red Book so popular was that it created with the idea that the Chinese populace was educated while many remained illiterate. This was one of the reason study groups were formed; so that a reader could read the Red Book to a group of illiterate peasants who would then memorize long passages so that they could feign literacy. In many places all other books but those by Chairman Mao were banned.

Reading in Chinese society was held in high esteem even under communism and the idea of each citizen being a scholar was an appealing idea to both the peasants and served the purposes of Lin Biao who saw hat the more widely the Cult of Mao and Mao Zedong Thought was spread the more his power would increase. But by 1970 the end of the Cultural Revolution had begun. Many within the party believed the Cultural Revolution had gone to far, destroyed to much, and were scared that they would become the next party member to be openly criticized by Red Guards.

Lin Biao’s success in promoting the teachings of Mao made him the successor to Mao starting in August of 1966 but his role was formalized in at the Ninth Party Congress convened in April of 1969 (Ming-Le, 1983: 49). After this Lin Biao tightened the grip of the military on Chinese Society. Lin Biao maneuvered to take advantage of the Sino-Soviet Border clashes in the spring of 1969 to declare martial law. Lin Biao quickly encountered opposition to his growing power.

Mao himself became concerned about what he saw as a successor to eager to assume power, and starting in the fall of 1970 Mao maneuvered to limit the power of Lin Biao (Ming-Le, 1983: 47-52). In August of 1970 a national conference was held called the Second Plenum which was a conference of people chosen at the 1969 national conference to decide national policy. The Second Plenum was held in Lushan and chaired by Mao Zedong. At this conference Lin Biao maneuvered to make himself president of the republic.

His clique of followers which included Chen Boda circulated such statements as, “Lin Biao is an uncommon genius he is one of the great teachers like Marx, and Lenin and Mao” (Ming-Le, 1983: 50) Lin Biao saw that holding the office of the presidency which became vacant after the death Liu Shaoqi in 1969 was a tool by which he could assume control over China and fulfill his lifetime ambition. On August 25, 1970 Mao convened the conference and upon hearing of Lin Biao’s plan destroyed it in a matter of two days. Mao did this in three ways.

First, he sentenced Chen Boda to self-examination, this was a clear warning to Lin Biao to stop his grab for power. Second, Mao threatened the members of the conference by saying that he would leave if they brought up the issue of the presidency. Third, Mao wrote in a public letter called, “Some Views of Mine,” a criticism of those who claim but do not really understand Marxism. This letter was clearly speaking about Lin Biao although it did not say so directly. The conference at Lushan was a turning point for Lin Biao is symbolized his fall from the graces of Mao because of what Mao perceived as his impatience to become resident.

Mao was able to effectively eliminate Lin Biao as a threat by joining forces with Zhou Enlai and by isolating Lin Biao’s assistant Chen Boda. (Yan and Gao, 1996: 309) By January of 1971 Lin Biao was no longer in Mao’s clique of advisors and Mao further distanced himself from Lin Biao and his work at creating a cult of Mao by saying in December of 1970 that he felt the cult created around him had grown to large (Yan and Gao, 1996: 313), what happened between then and Lin Biao’s death in September of the year is the object of much speculation.

The official Chinese government’s story is that Lin Biao died on September 13, 1971, in an airplane crash in Mongolia as he was fleeing to the Soviet Union after having plotted unsuccessfully to overthrow Mao. According to this account during the whole of 1971 Lin Biao was organizing a coup among military officers. This account is very much in doubt and their is much speculation that Lin Biao after falling out of favor with the party leadership was assassinated by communist party (Ming-Le, 1983:228).

This has been reinforced by Mongolian reports in 1990 that say that Lin Biao a was not on the plane that crashed in 1971. The years of 1970 to 1971 were also marked by the winding down of the Cultural Revolution as schools were reopened and Red Guard groups disbanded. It is a historic irony that Lin Biao who gave Mao so much power by building up his cult following was in the end a victim of the power that he created for Mao when he tried to gain control of the presidency in 1970. The death of Lin Biao in 1971 brought to China a silent liberation from the Cult of Mao.

The people discovered that the person that they had for so long recognized as the high priest of the Maoist Cult and Mao’s most loyal supporter was in fact a Janus faced person who was in fact planning to overthrow Mao. Lin Biao’s two-faced ppearance awakened in the Chinese public a distrust in politics and a feeling of deception in the Cult of Mao. The death of Lin Biao marked the end of the mass rallies in Tianamen Square and the end of the Cultural Revolution’s crazed delirium (Yan and Gao, 1996: 335). The fall of Lin Biao is closely connected with the end of the Red Book.

After Lin Biao fell from the inner circle of Mao newspapers stopped publishing accounts of Lin Biao’s genius and stopped also publishing pictures of the Red Book. A graphical analysis of pictures during this period shows a sharp decline in the number of pictures of the Red Book following December of 1970. This closely correlates with the demise of Lin Biao as a member of Mao’s inner circle. By the time Lin Biao died in September of 1971 barely any pictures of Lin Biao’s Red Book were published in place of pictures of the Red Book and slogans urging education in Mao Zedong Thought; were tractors, workers in factors, and farmers plowing fields.

All around China images of Lin Biao and his calligraphy were destroyed (Kraus, 1991: 111) On of the most telling pictures is that of the Albanian Nation Basketball team in 1972 being received by Mao in Beijing the accompanying story says that the Albanians received Chinese handicrafts from heir hosts. In a nearly identical article published in 1967 the Albanian Basketball team is pictured meeting Chairman Mao and Lin Biao and the accompanying story says they received copies of the Red Book translated into Albanian.

These two articles show the tremendous transformation that took place in China during the intervening years between the articles. The rise and fall of Lin Biao is inextricably connected with the rise and fall of his Red Book. When Lin Biao first became head of the army in 1959 he saw that if he wanted to rise in power he could do this only by currying favor ith Mao Zedong; to this end he promoted Mao Zedong Thought within the army and later throughout China.

Lin Biao built up the Cult of Mao Zedong Thought through a combination of playing on the needs of the Chinese people during a time of chaos by publishing the Red Book and by extolling the virtues of memorizing Mao’s quotes in newspapers. The story of Lin Biao is the fascinating story of a man who rode the production of propaganda to great heights but his story also provides an insight into propaganda and what it tells us about China. Pictures in China Reconstructs from 1966 to 1974 show that propaganda was not just a tool f the Communist party but also a reflection of internal power struggles within the party during the Cultural Revolution.

When Lin Biao gained power so did the number of images of the Red Book and when Lin Biao lost power the number of images of his Red Book dropped to nearly zero. Propaganda during the Cultural Revolution was not just a way for the communist party to control the people but it also was a reflection of individuals power within the party. The history of Lin Biao meteoric rise and demise is told not only in the history books but also in ascent and fall of his most prized piece of propaganda the Red Book.