The Chinese civilization has a very long history, but it is only in the recent one hundred years or so that there have ever been questions asked about its merits or demerits, its contribution to the world as a whole, and its possible development, Such studies are possible only when we have a full knowledge of the other civilizations of the world; when we can compare and contrast, draw parallels and make discriminations; when we can detach ourselves and see our civilization against a background of the achievements and tendencies of humanity at large. But formerly we did not possess such a knowledge. For the most time we were under the illusion that we were the only civilized people of the world. Our civilization was seldom thought of as the Chinese civilization, but as the Civilization. We called our country the Celestial Empire, which was supposed to be situated at the Centre of the Universe. What we knew about the rest of the world was largely derived from our imperfect knowledge of our near neighbors – those states, which were not only politically our vassals but culturally our inferiors. It seemed that we had everything to teach them but nothing to learn from them. To India, of course, we were indebted for our Buddhism, but the Chinese perhaps made more contributions than the Indians to raise Buddhism to its present position as one of the major religions of the world. We did a great deal to perfect its theology, elaborate its rituals, and propagate its doctrine. The result was that Buddhism become a native religion of ours, and India only loomed large in our imagination as the birth-place of the Buddha, a half-mythical kingdom that had little to do with our practical life. There was then no foreign influence strong enough to shake our belief that what China represented was a universal civilization, the highest of man's intellectual and spiritual achievements. The supremacy of the Chinese civilization was never questioned, because it had no rival. There was no need to differentiate it, because it was thought to be unique.
Also we did not care much about the future. Life was then more static than it is today; and if for hundreds of years we saw but little change around us, naturally we would also expect little change to come. We might live among the same social circles for many generations; read the same books, conceive the same ideas, enjoy the same landscape, and even sit in the same chairs as our ancestors had done before. It seemed that the same circumstances that made up our life would last a very long time, not if indefinitely; though we might miss some of those good things during the happy years of war or famine, yet we always believed that they would return to us. We believed that if we could take care of the present, then the future would take care of itself. Our attitude towards the future was generally that of indifference - an attitude that was based upon our acceptance of a stable present and an honored past. We were as unlikely to be scared by the dark forebodings of the pessimists, as to be elated in the hope of the advent of a millennium. We had, of course, our ideals of a better world; but according to traditional Confucianist and Taoist beliefs, the Golden Age was a period that had happened long long ago: the best we could hope to achieve was to return to that time of peace and happiness when the legendary philosopher-kings ruled. There was, therefore, a greater tendency among us to look backward than to look forward. But most of us looked neither backward nor forward: they were contented with the present. Our problem used to be not how to strive so that we might make tomorrow a better day than today, but how to live peacefully so that we might be oblivious of time and have a full enjoyment of the present moment.
Such an attitude of resignation and contentment is generally believed to be characteristic of the Chinese race of the old times. But if among us today less and less people can be found that are thus passively wise, this is not a change for us to lament. It is really that we have found we cannot afford to content ourselves with what we have or what we had. We have been aroused, so to speak, from the dream world of isolated distance and timelessness to the hard reality of ceaseless efforts and adaptation. The world is not only larger than we used to know it, but is also moving on rapidly, so much so that "to catch up with time" has become with us a very important problem. We have seen that civilizations can be "dead", and some of those as old as ours are now no more. By those younger nations that happened to be better adjusted to this changing world, we have been disrespectfully treated; and also we have highly paid for our ignorance and occasional arrogance. It seems that we cannot hope to meet with equal treatment in the family of nations, unless we make strenuous efforts to build a new and better China. Most of us, of course, are still proud of our past when they are dissatisfied with the present. But it is the future that absorbs our attention, draws us forward, puzzles us and challenges us. Whatever course our civilization may take in its development, one thing at least is certain: that we cannot remain where we are, nor can we live again in those good old days. If peace and happiness is to come back to us, that peace and happiness will not be the same as of the old; it will be at least of a more enduring nature, since it will be obtained after such severe trials as we are going through today.
But our present situation seems sometimes too chaotic, sometimes too elusive to serve as a basis for predictions about the future. Our life is hard and precarious. We might be lost among the fluctuations of events that change from day to day. We might be worried; we might be disheartened. But guided by the faith that a civilization like ours, with such glorious achievements and tested qualities, will never fade away from the earth, we can set down our problems in very simple terms:
1. There is an immediate threat to be removed - that is Communism;
2. There is a rival civilization - the Western civilization - to learn from and to understand; and
3. There is the preservation and regeneration of our own civilization.
The Communist Threat
Our civilization has been threatened with barbarism before, but never so seriously as today. For while the Communists take no less delight in murder, rapine, blasphemy and vandalism than any other brigands of barbarians, they are nevertheless organized under an ironclad discipline and equipped with a high-grade efficiency and all the knowledge of modern sciences. The old barbarians might score brilliant victories on the battlefield, and then, when their energy was spent, were either to be driven back to their home on the steppes, or to settle down to be assimilated into the civilization of the conquered people who would eventually conquer them, though in a different way. But the modern barbarians arc methodical. They are deliberate. Coupled with their military strength is a cunning and ruthlessness that has ensured them to make easy conquests. Their cowardly "infiltration" is as well-calculated and deadly as the onslaught of their frantic hordes. They will unscrupulously strike if they are sure that brutal force alone can win. But sometimes they will psychologically and morally disarm the victim before they kill it: then they will have to smile and to sneak. They will even talk of "peace", when "peace" serves their ends. They have an ideology that is logically untenable but has enough emotional power to create troubles in any society. They will break as any promises as they are ready to make. While never remitting their efforts to consolidate, to strengthen the control over what they have already possessed, they are forever seeking expansion. They will never be satiated, their aim being no less than to enslave the whole humanity. The spread of Communism, indeed, will never stop, unless it is forced to. It will never give up, unless it is completely defeated.
The threat of Communism is therefore not directed against the Chances alone; it is a common enemy to the whole civilized world. To hold it at bay, to nullify its pretensions, and to overthrow its world-conquest schemes is not a burden to be shouldered by us alone. The question confronting us today is not whether the Chinese civilization (or the American civilization, for that matter) will survive; it is rather whether civilization will survive. It is evident that the world will never have peace, so long as the thousands of millions of the Chinese people on the mainland are left at the mercy of the Communist rulers. Misfortunes that have fallen upon them may any day fall upon their neighbors. But few of our friends seemed to realize the danger at first. When the world was naively misled into accepting the Communists as "humanitarian land-reformers" and "peace-lovers", our government was waging an almost single-handed fight against this force of evil. We received little encouragement. Attempts were even made by our good-intentioned friends to dissuade us from the fight. We sustained severe losses; we met with alarming reverses. But we have never slackened our efforts. Today when our friends condensed to make the observation that Free China is the "most powerful stronghold" against Communism in the Far East, they must be gratified to find that no setbacks, no discouragements have ever changed our will to fight. They must be glad to see, too, that China has been unified as never before: the Chinese in Taiwan and overseas and our revolting brothers on the mainland are working together for this sole purpose: to rid the world of the Communist threat.
With our unified efforts towards a definite aim, with increasing moral and material support from abroad in view, we can say with certainty that the liberation of the whole of China and the re-establishment of peace and order will not be far away. We have profited, too, from this hard struggle with Communism. We have learned the importance of economic equality and stability of a society as anti-dote and preventive against the spread of Communism or any other fanatic ideas. We have experienced what miserable conditions a nation may degenerate into when it has lost its spirituals guidance. These are bitter Lessons, but they will be of great use when we shall apply them to the reconstruction of our mainland.
The Western Influence
The Western civilization has done us at least one important service, that is, to stimulate the Old Empire from a perennial lethargy into a new activity. It has broadened our vision, quickened our imagination, set before us a new scale of values, and offered us new possibilities of life. While it attracts us with the new vistas it opens and the strange things it presents to our view, it also send us back to search more closely into ourselves. We have become self-conscious; we have asked more questions. We seem to know beter about ourselves now, for the greatness of a civilization cannot be properly understood without a proper appreciation of the strength and beauties of some rival civilization.
We have also shown a great aptitude to learn. It is to the Western influence that we most of our reform movements. The founders of our Republic, including Dr. Sun Yat-sen himself, received at least a part of their inspiration from the similar revolutions in America and France, But the Western influence has manifested itself in so many other ways. When we speak, for instance, of the progress, we have made in the lines of education, industry, business, agriculture, medicine, and those other things where new technique, new knowledge, efficiency and management are required, we are only speaking of a progress of how successfully we have emulated what the Westerns have done along the same lines; of a progress, indeed, in the use of Western methods, the adoption of Western ideas, the imitation of Western systems. Even our daily life has been modified, if not altogether changed, after the examples of how the Westerners live theirs. We now enjoy at least more variety in our foods and drinks, our games and sports, the clothes we wear, the houses we build, and in the sentence-structures of our everyday speech. We are taking up the Western way of life and we seem to like it. And the transformation in such details of ordinary life has thus far been accomplished with not much conscious effect under very little encouragement and no coercion at all.
But the essence of the Western civilization does not consist in weekend parties and Christmas cards, nor even in motorcars and skyscrapers. We should be still far from comprehending the Western spirit if we should stop at the copying of these superficial habits and mechanical wonders. For the Western civilization has also its non-material side that is apt to elude the notice of an Oriental. The high decipherment of science in the Western countries and their good social order have not been achieved by accident: they originate from a spirit that is of a no less fine and noble quality than ours. A civilization that is based upon intellectualism, civic pride and government by law must prove to be highly valuable as a stimulus and an influence to correct our own habits of inexactitude, our louse social organization, and our general indifference towards the public affairs. While we believe we shall continue to be profited by the same influence, we recognize that a true understanding of the Western spirit is an absolute necessity today. For the Communists on the mainland have the impudence to speak also of "Westernization". That is a shameless lie. All the Communists of the world are simply copying the Russians, and as every one of us knows, Russia has never inherited the spirit of the Western civilization. It is the Byzantium superstitions and the Tartar tyranny that have shaped the Russian "tradition". What is known as the International Communism today is nothing but the carrying-on of that tradition, theorized with the help of a borrowed creed that is modified every few years to suit the changing tastes of the reigning Czar - that is Stalin. The Russians have indeed come to know how to build airplanes and even atomic bombs and probably they will know a great deal more. They might think themselves "civilized" just as a clothed gorilla will think himself civilized. But by copying only the material, the superficial side of a civilization, they will always be kept from being civilized. Civilization, whether Eastern or Western, implies a civilized way of life, a civilized spirit that is based upon the principles of honor, love, and civility, of tolerance and cooperations of peaceful means of settling disputes, of the dignity of the individual. These are the very principles that the Russians and their Communist followers have set about to destroy. So "Barbarians" is the only designation we can think out for them. Of course, the Russians can be brought to reason, they can be civilized even, but first of all let them be convinced of the strength of the civilized world. Let us first win this battle of Defence of Civilization.
Our New Civilization
As both the Chinese and Western civilization represent a common civilized way of life, there is little that is incompatible between them. Our intellectual, ethical, and aesthetic life has won enthusiastic admiration abroad, and we have good reasons to except that the Westerns will be more than a little profited when they come to learn from us. Our civilization has heights and depths that the Westerns perhaps have never reached. Our emphasis on the ethical order of the society, our great susceptibility to the perception of immediate truth, and our traditional practice of "golden mean" will surely help to make a happier world when we have got rid of the Communist threat and begun the work of reconstruction.
But we should not sit idle and say that we have made enough contributions. We should not ignore that fact that while we have so many things to learn from the West, the West does not seem to be so eager to learn from us. As a matter of fact, there is as much possibility for the Western countries to be Sinicized as for China to be Westernized. The civilizations of the world are forever acting upon each other, borrowing from each other, and mingling with each other. As China is adapting herself under the Western influence, the Western countries are also making their responses to our influence. The difference is only that, (a fact which we with all our national pride cannot deny), our influence upon them is not so strong, for the moment at least, as theirs upon us. For the force of influence of a nation is determined not so much by its past achievements, as by the creative energy of the present generation. We have, of course, had our creative geniuses; but our painters belonged to the Sung dynasty, our poets to the T'ang dynasty, and our philosophers to the period of the warring Kingdoms. They form a cultural heritage, esteemed indeed and admired by all the civilized world. Their contributions are comparable to anything that the Westerners have eve attempted. But after all, they are people of a remote past; and whatever inspiration may be stil1 derived from them, we cannot expect those honored names to exert today any vital influence upon the other civilizations. What one's ancestors have done is no substitute for what one should do oneself. All the chilling remarks on the so-called senility of the Chinese civilization will surely fall into discredit, when China should again become a nation of painters, poets, and philosophers, (and, we should add, also of mathematicians, physicists, and chemists) as the Western countries are now. Then, perhaps, we should not speak of Westernization any more. For then the West should have as much to learn from us, as we from them. Our present work is largely that of imitation. But imitation is necessary and laudable until it is superseded by creation. To defend our civilization against Communism is, as we have interpreted, simply to preserve what we have already had; but to create is to have more things worth preserving, and perhaps better things too. We believe we shall come safely through the present crisis, and that we shall defeat the Communists; but the reconstruction of China after the Communists are defeated will perhaps offer more difficult problems then even the Communist aggression has given rise to. We believe we have the pluck to weather any difficulties; but survive is one thing, to live a fuller and more beautiful life is quite another. Our real test will come when China will prove to world that she not only deserves all her past honors, but will have more new honors to reap. It is reasonable to expect that a rejuvenated China will make even more contributions than her old self.