Questions from East and West · Interpretation丨Yihua Jiang: Why does "the world is one society" have a profound impact on the development of Chinese civilization?

　　Editor's note:

　　The report of the Twentieth National Congress of the Communist Party of China pointed out that the excellent traditional Chinese culture has a long history, is broad and profound, and is the crystallization of the wisdom of Chinese civilization. Commitment to morality, trustworthiness and friendship, friendship with benevolence and good neighbors, etc., are important manifestations of the worldview, worldview, social outlook, and moral outlook accumulated by the Chinese people in their long-term production and life, and are highly compatible with the scientific socialist value proposition .

　　From February 7, 2023, the China News Agency's "East and West Questions" column will launch a special plan for "Shidian", inviting scholars and famous experts to focus on the above ten key words to explain their historical origin, inheritance and development, and the significance of the times, with a view to helping Chinese and foreign readers understand Chinese culture. The wisdom crystallization of civilization provides a window.

　　China News Agency, Beijing, February 7th: Why does "the world is one society" have a profound impact on the development of Chinese civilization?

　　Author Jiang Yihua is a professor of history at Fudan University and a member of the Social Science Committee of the Ministry of Education.

　　The authoritative statement of "the world is the public" can be found in "Book of Rites·Li Yun": "The way of the great way is also the world is the public. Select the virtuous and capable, trustworthy and harmonious, so people are not only relatives, not only sons and sons , so that the old will end, the strong will be useful, the young will be strong, and those who are reserved, widowed, lonely, lonely, and disabled will all be supported... This is called Great Harmony." "The world is public" is the ideal pursued by Confucius state.

The Confucius Museum in Jining, Shandong displays "The Book of Rites".

Photo courtesy of Visual China

　　"The world is for the public" can be called one of the driving forces for the development of ancient Chinese small-scale peasant society.

The pre-Qin Mohists advocated universal love and advocating the same, which can be said to represent this kinetic energy.

In December 1958, Chairman Mao Zedong pointed out in his commentary for the publication of "Three Kingdoms: The Biography of Zhang Lu" that "the broad stratum of extremely poor peasants dream of equality, freedom, getting rid of poverty, and having enough food and clothing" "has a primitive socialist nature" and "has an unconscious primitive socialism".

The systems of land restriction, land occupation, and land equalization implemented in the Han and Tang Dynasties indicated that the state government must shoulder the responsibility of allocating land equally. The deepest driving force driving them to do so is "the world is for the public."

　　China's traditional land rights and capital operation system and the corresponding national governance system have continued to compete for capital, mutual control, and competition over the long years because of "the world is public", "the world is family" and "the world is private". Continuous self-adjustment has enabled Chinese civilization and a unified country to maintain and develop for a long time; since modern times, under the pressure of Western capitalist economic, military, political, religious, and cultural invasions, the modern industrial-technical civilization first formed in Europe and the United States In the face of all-round challenges, the Chinese civilization has demonstrated unprecedented resilience and coping capabilities.

In 2016, citizens visited the "Road to Revival" themed exhibition at the Shanghai Gallery Center.

Photo by Wang Gang

　　Many modern Chinese people with lofty ideals were eager to learn from the West, but many people criticized and rejected Western capitalism from the very beginning.

Fundamentally speaking, some systems in European and American capitalist countries are based on "the world is selfish", that is, on the basis that everyone is an "economic man" and "self-interested man" who seek to maximize profits, and regard private ownership as "everything in modern society". The source of civilization", which created a fierce conflict with China's pursuit of a "great harmony" world in which "the world is one for all".

　　Socialism is a brand-new concept introduced to China in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

However, the core values ​​and basic demands of socialism are very much in line with the Chinese people's longing for "the world is for the public."

　　In "The Book of Datong", Kang Youwei advocated public agriculture, public industry, and public business, eliminating family, country, ethnic, and species boundaries, and bringing "the world for the public" to the extreme.

Liang Qichao said in "Introduction to Academics in the Qing Dynasty" that "The Book of Great Harmony" originated from "Book of Rites·Li Yun", "You Wei said that this is the ideal social system of Confucius, and that the so-called "Taiping World" in "Spring and Autumn" is this ".

Kang Youwei's "Book of Great Harmony".

Photo courtesy of Visual China

　　In 1906, Zhang Taiyan specifically talked about the need to seriously study the socialist factors contained in China's past laws and regulations: "As for the things that are particularly good in China, what Europe and the United States cannot do is the matter of equalization of land, which is in line with society. Not to mention the three generations of well fields, from the Wei, Jin to Tang, this land equalization system was practiced. So there is no gap between the rich and the poor, and local politics are easy to implement.”

　　Mr. Sun Yat-sen, who was then the leader of the Xingzhong Society and the China Tongmenghui, also regarded socialism as an important goal.

Sun Yat-sen advocated state-owned land at first, and in his later years he proposed that "the tiller shall have the land". In the "Industrial Plan", he advocated the development of the state-owned economy and the control of the country's main economic lifeline. Later, with the help of the Communist International and the Communist Party of China, the Kuomintang was reorganized, determined to help farmers and workers, and connected with the broad labor and peasant movements.

Zhongshan, Guangdong, the words "The world is one" on the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall.

Photo courtesy of Visual China

　　The historical mission of finding the correct path for China to truly realize socialism was accomplished by the Chinese Communists represented by Mao Zedong and his successors.

After the failure of the Great Revolution, Mao Zedong took the lead in shifting the focus of the party's work from the cities to the countryside, and launched an agrarian revolutionary war with farmers as the main force and the current goal of distributing land equally according to the population. " Organically combined with "The world is home", it opened up the correct route to socialism through the new democratic revolution.

At the same time, it also recognized the historical rationality of the existence of "the world is selfish" represented by emerging capitalist industry and commerce, determined the basic policy of "giving consideration to both public and private interests, benefiting both labor and capital, mutual assistance between urban and rural areas, and internal and external exchanges", and united all forces that could be united. , utilized all available positive factors, formed the broadest united front, and won the victory of the new-democratic revolution throughout the country.

National Museum "Road to Revival" exhibition.

Photo by Chen Xiaodong

　　Since the reform and opening up, starting from the implementation of the household contract responsibility system in rural areas and the confirmation that farmers have the legal right to independently manage the contracted land, China has gradually confirmed that various forms of non-public economy are an important part of the socialist market economy. Solved the problem of the relationship between "the world is public", "the world is family" and "the world is private" in large-scale economic construction and modern social transformation, and formed socialism with Chinese characteristics that is extremely creative in world history.

Corporate signage in Lhasa, Tibet.

Photo by Tang Dynasty Yang

　　The arduous exploration, continuous practice and various creations of the Chinese Communists in China's political system and political operation, in the final analysis, is to find ways to restrain the negative effects of various political systems derived from "the world is for selfishness". In the process, continue and expand China's excellent tradition of "the world is for the public" and "the world is for the family" to combine and complement each other.

　　The most popular value system, knowledge system, and discourse system used by the West to interpret China is the so-called Eastern social theory that has been dominant for hundreds of years.

Many scholars in modern Europe, who especially advocate the private property system, often regard the emergence and development of individual standards and private ownership of means of production as the main symbol and inexhaustible driving force for the emergence and development of civilization.

In their eyes, the so-called oriental society or Asiatic society including Turkey, Persia, India, and Russia has been in an uncivilized and uncivilized stagnant and backward state because of the long-term preservation of the public land ownership system and the autocratic political system.

Afterwards, Adam Smith, James Mill, John Mill, Montesquieu, Hegel and others successively extended the scope of the so-called Eastern society or Asiatic society to China.

　　In 1859, Marx stated in the preface to "Critique of Political Economy": "Generally speaking, the Asiatic, ancient, feudal and modern bourgeois modes of production can be regarded as several eras in the evolution of social and economic forms." Although He listed the Asiatic mode of production as a distinct one, and later explicitly objected to the generalizations he had drawn largely from European historical developments to the rest of the world.

However, after the establishment of the Third International, a group of scholars absolutized the above-mentioned theory of the sequential evolution of social and economic forms into unchangeable dogmas and formulas, and simply used them to interpret Chinese civilization and Chinese history.

Exhibition of Historical Documents of Marxism.

Photo by Yang Bo

　　Since the end of the Qing Dynasty, in the wave of Western learning eastward, the above-mentioned arguments of European scholars on Eastern society were introduced into China, which deeply influenced the Chinese academic circle.

For nearly a century, it has been widely popular in academic circles to combine the views of these Western thinkers on Eastern society with the above-mentioned formulas and dogmas to construct Asiatic society, slavery common in the East, land state-owned feudalism, land Landlord ownership feudalism, feudal despotism, feudal society's long-term stagnation and other theories are used to rewrite Chinese history and describe Chinese reality.

　　It is not difficult to find evidence for these arguments from a vast amount of historical materials, but they all lack a comprehensive, holistic, cohesive, and integrated grasp of Chinese civilization and Chinese history. , The core kinetic energy of China's historical development lacks attention.

　　We should strive to interpret the socialist cause with Chinese characteristics that the Communist Party of China and the Chinese people are engaged in from the core value system, knowledge system, and discourse system that constitute the lifeline of Chinese civilization, instead of following some popular value system and knowledge system in the West. , discourse system to make comments, so that the world can understand China more clearly.

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Expert profile:

　　Jiang Yihua, born in 1939, is from Yangzhou, Jiangsu.

Professor of the History Department of Fudan University, doctoral supervisor, member of the Social Science Committee of the Ministry of Education, senior distinguished professor of Fudan University, and director of the Chinese and Foreign Modernization Process Research Center of Fudan University, a key research base for humanities and social sciences of the Ministry of Education.

Since 1986, he has successively served as a member of the Social Science Committee of the Ministry of Education, president of the Shanghai History Society, dean of the School of Humanities at Fudan University, and director of the Chinese and Foreign Modernization Research Center of Fudan University, a key research base for humanities and social sciences of the Ministry of Education.

Mainly engaged in the research on the history of Chinese culture, the history of modern Chinese thought, the theory of historiography and the history of modern Sino-foreign relations.

His masterpieces include Research on Zhang Taiyan’s Thought, Stumbling for a Hundred Years—The Modern Awakening of Small Peasant China, The Enlightenment of the Absence of Rationality, Modernity: China’s Rewriting, Zhang Binglin’s Biography, The World is Public—Silhouette of Sun Yat-sen Thinkers, Chinese Civilization The foundation of "Introduction to Historiography" and so on.