China Popular Itineraries |
|
|
|
|
The Conception of Great National Unity and Values of Collectivism |
Chinese traditional values attached great importance to the commonweal, or collective interest. Derived from Chinese traditional society, they forcefully standardized the development of China's traditional society.
In light of the slack small-scaled peasant society, in order to organize thousands of loosely connected peasant families to sustain the social order and operate as complements of autocratically centralized system, the conception of a great national unity emerged. Early in the Western Zhou Dynasty, there was the notion that "all the land under the sky belongs to the king; all the people within this country are the king's subjects. " Zhouwang, or Emperor Zhou claimed to be the Son of the Heaven, representing the Heaven to rule the whole country. For instance, Lord Qihuan, the first powerful leader of feudal lords in the Spring and Autumn Period voiced a slogan "respect the king and reject the officials. " Reflected in the ideological sphere, all the various schools of thought and their exponents maintained the political unification. Mo Ti talked about"unison"; Mencius held that "the lands under the Heaven will be in peace when being unified. " Xunzi advocated that "the whole country is one family. " It reads in "Lii ' s Spring and Autumn Annals" that "united, there will be order; disunited, there will be disorder. Unified, there will be peace; separated, there will be peril." After the unification of China in the Qin Dy-nasty, the notion of "great national unity" was further consolidated. Inscrip-tion on First Emperor Qin's Langya engraved stone reads "all the land in the universe belongs to the Emperor." Han Wudi in the Han Dynasty stressed es-pecially the spirit of "a great national unity. " According to the "Historical Records", a magnum opus of historic significance written in this period, the forefathers of Xia, Shang, Zhou, Qin, Han dynasties and the forefathers of the minority nationalities living around the Central Plain, such as the Rong, Di, Man and Yi, all originated in Huangdi, who is the common forefather of all the Chinese nationalities. The notion of Yandi descendants and Huangdi descendants was thus formed.
A comprehensive survey of Chinese ancient history reveals that the notion of "unification" was associated with the notion of "reverence of emperor. " For example, the system of centralization was associated with the system of auto-cratic monarchy; the notion of "a great national unity" in politics was associat-ed with the notion of "supremacy of monarchical power. " In China, the no-tion that Divinity vested monarchical power was as remote as the emergence of the nation. The notion "just as there is only one sun in the sky, there is only one supreme ruler" may be said to be rooted in the people's mind. Early in the pre-Qin days, most of the schools of thought and their exponents insisted on venerating the monarch. For instance, Confucius maintained a notion of social stratum that "the monarch is superior to the subjects; the father is supe-rior to the sons. " The Legalists' theory holds that "the sovereign power is the supreme power. " All of these are the typical examples of the notion of "rever-ence of the monarch". From the Qin and the Han dynasties to the Ming and the Qing dynasties, the tendency of the social development lay in the increas-ing reinforcement of the system and notion of the autocratic monarchy. The first Emperor Ying Zheng of the Qin Dynasty once said that "there is no im-portant affair under the Heaven which is not decided by the monarch;" the first emperor in the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang said that "all the rights under the Heaven must be put in the hands of the monarch." So the system of autocratic monarchy was strengthened to the extreme. The notion that the sovereign was the nation manifested the fact that the autocratic monarch was the representative of the country and the symbol of the unification in ancient times. The notion "a great national unity" in Chinese history played an impor-tant part in safeguarding the unification of the nation and the unity of all nationalities, and in promoting the development of the multi-national country.
The forceful tie of people of the patriarchal relations and the culture of autocratic monarchy that gave prominence to unification cultivated the Chinese values of collectivism while the individual interest was often ignored. The val-ues asserting collective interest also fostered the Chinese tradition of patriotism and collectivism. Patriotic heroic spirit became the national spirit. In the Chi-nese history, the contributions made by patriotic national heroes such as Su Wu, Yue Fei, Wen Tianxiang, Cheng Ji Si Khan, Qi Jiguang, and Zheng Chenggong etc., have been glitteringly recorded in the historical annals. The spirits they displayed have become the spiritual backbone of the Chinese. |
|
