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In Search of Chinese National Character via Child-Training

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SolomonRichard H., Mao's Revolution and the Chinese Political Culture. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1971, 604 pp., $16.75; $5.95 paper.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Pi-Chao Chen
Pi-Chao Chen
Affiliation:
Professor of Political Science at Wayne State University.
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Extract

The postwar period has been an unusual era in the annals of political science. Numerous practitioners of the discipline have ventured into areas previously unexplored, formulating new concepts, constructing new conceptual frameworks and models, putting forth new hypotheses and theories previously unstated, borrowing and importing ideas and methodological tools from sister disciplines, and improving upon old and innovating new research techniques (particularly quantitative techniques)—all in the interest of pushing forward the frontiers of knowledge. It seems no exaggeration to say that this is one of the most creative, if not necessarily the most fruitful, episodes in the development of the discipline.

Type
Review Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 25 , Issue 4 , July 1973 , pp. 608 - 635
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1973

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References

1 Nettl, J. P., Political Mobilization (New York 1967), 44.Google Scholar

2 There are, however, a number of defects and deficiencies inevitable in a pioneering work. See for example, Czudnowski, Moshe M., “A Salience Dimension of Politics for the Study of Polidcal Culture,” American Political Science Review, LXII (September 1968), 878–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gibbons, David S., “The Spectator Political Culture: A Refinement of the Almond and Verba Model,” Journal of Commonwealth Political Studies, IX (March 1971), 19–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Johnson, Chalmers A., Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power (Stanford 1962).Google Scholar For a recent critique, see Kataoka, Tetsuya, “Communist Power in a War of National Liberation: The Case of China,” World Politics, XXIV (April 1972), 410–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Schurmann, Franz, Ideology and Organization in Communist China (Berkeley 1966).Google Scholar

5 Wilson, Richard W., Learning to be Chinese: The Political Socialization of Children in Taiwan (Cambridge, Mass. 1970).Google Scholar

6 Ridly, Charles Price, Godwin, Paul H. B., and Doolin, Dennis U., The Making of a Model Citizen in Communist China (Stanford 1971).Google Scholar

7 Pye, Lucian W., The Spirit of Chinese Politics (Cambridge, Mass. 1968).Google Scholar See also Pye, , China: An Introduction (Boston 1972)Google Scholar, and Hsiung's, James C.critical review in Perspective, 1 (December 1972), 237.Google Scholar

8 Lifton, Robert J., Revolutionary Immortality: Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Cultural Revolution (New York 1968).Google Scholar

9 Students of political culture have yet to come to some sort of consensus as to what constitutes the core of intellectual concerns and appropriate research procedure. This is reflected in a recent conference summarized in Knapp, Dorothy and others, “Digest of die Conference on Political Culture and Comparative Communist Studies,” Newsletter on Comparative Studies of Communism, v (May 1972), 2–17.Google Scholar

10 See also Solomon, , “Mao's Effort to Reintegrate the Chinese Polity: Problems of Authority and Conflict,” in Doak Barnett, A., ed., Chinese Communist Politics in Action (Seattle 1969), 271–364.Google Scholar

11 Ruth Benedict has made more or less similar observations about the Japanese. See The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture (Boston 1946).

12 Lucian W. Pye (fn. 7); Leites, Nathan, “Psycho-Cultural Hypotheses About Political Acts,” World Politics, 1 (October 1948), 102–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Among the studies by political that attempt to explain politics in terms of culture and personality, two readily come to mind: Banfield, Edward C., The Moral Basis of a Backward Society (Glencoe, III. 1958)Google Scholar, and Pye, , Politics, Personality and Nation-Building (New Haven 1962).Google Scholar

13 See, for example, Lindesmith, Alfred R. and Strauss, Anselm L., “A Critique of Culture-Personality Writings,” American Sociological Review, xv (October 1950), 587–600.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Inkeles, Alex, “National Character and Modern Political Systems,” in Hsu, Francis L. K., ed., Psychological Anthropology: Approaches to Culture and Personality (Home wood, Ill. 1961), 184.Google Scholar

15 Hsu, Francis L. K., Under the Ancestor's Shadow (New York 1967), 8.Google Scholar

16 Ibid., 10.

17 Ibid., 9.

18 Fei, Hsiao-tung, China's Gentry (Chicago 1953), 248.Google Scholar

19 Ibid., 249.

20 Hsu (fn. 14), 231.

21 Bert Kaplan, “Cross-Cultural Use of Projective Techniques,” ibid., 238–40.

22 Ibid., 240.

23 Wilson (fn. 5), chap. 3.

24 Lindesmith and Strauss (fn. 13), 597.

25 Orlansky, H., “Infant Care and Personality,” Psychological Bulletin, XL (1949), 1–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar, as recapitulated in Lindesmith and Strauss (fn. 13), 596, 598.

26 Bandura, Albert and Walters, Richard H., Social Learning and Personality Development (New York 1963), 130.Google Scholar

27 Tsou, Tang, “Western Concepts and China's Historical Experience,” World Politics, XXI (July 1969), 655–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 Blum, Gerald S. and Miller, Daniel R., “Exploring die Psychoanalytic Theory of the [Oral Character,]” Journal of Personality, xx (March 1952), 287–304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 Hsu, Francis L. K., Americans and Chinese, rev. ed. (New York 1970), 79.Google Scholar

30 Hyman, Herbert H., Political Socialization (Glencoe, Ill. 1959), 72Google Scholar and passim.

31 Uncritical adherence to this view could at times lead to ridiculous theorizing. According to Solomon, adult Chinese submissiveness, ambivalence, and impotence before authority is largely a function of interaction with the father in childhood. If this theory were correct, then the increasing insubordination, rebelliousness, and readiness to chal lenge the constituted “authority” (i.e., “the white power structure”), by post-1954 American blacks and other ethnic minorities might be explained in terms of a profound change in the way in which these groups have raised their children in the recent past; and the rebellion of the students in the 1960's might be explained in terms of the increasing permissiveness with which middle-class white Americans have raised their children in the recent past; and the relative reticence and subsidence of the campus rebellion in the last two or three years might again be accounted for in terms of a return to a less permissive child-rearing practice in the still more recent past. The “women's lib” movement might be explained in the same manner, and so forth and so forth. But what ridiculous explanations all these must appear to many, if not all of us. Assuming that Solomon's theory is correct and his exposition of Chairman Mao's motives for stirring up the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” (which constitutes part of his explanation for that great turmoil and upheaval) is also correct, then the most effective and the least painless way to change the political culture of China would have been for the Chairman to call upon the parents of the whole nation to “go all the way out” to “emulate” and “surpass” the American way of raising kids à la Dr. Spock, rather than to launch the Cultural Revolution—and thereby avoiding its tremendous costs.

32 For the idea of circular causation, see Myrdal, Gunnar, An American Dilemma (New York 1944), 75ff.Google Scholar, and Appendix 3, 1065ff.; and Myrdal, Gunnar, Asian Drama (New York 1968)Google Scholar, Appendix 2, especially 1844–47. By attempting to account for personality and culture exclusively in terms of child-rearing practices, students of personality and culture have a hard time explaining away personality and cultural changes in a society where child-rearing practices have remained virtually unchanged. For a study that shows that attitude and behavior toward authority could and did change in spite of the persistence of traditional child-rearing practices, see Mead, Margaret, New Lines for Old: Cultural Transformation, Manus 1928–53 (New York 1956).Google Scholar

33 Liu, Hui-chen Wang, The Traditional Chinese Clan Rules (New York 1959)Google Scholar, and “An Analysis of Chinese Clan Rules,” in Nivison, D. S. and Wright, A. F., eds., Confucianism in Action (Stanford 1959)Google Scholar; also Hu, Hsien-Chin, The Common Descent Group in China and Its Functions, Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology, No. 10 (New York 1948).Google Scholar

34 See Sprenkel, Sybill Van der, Legal Institutions in Manchu China (London 1962)Google Scholar, especially chap. 6.

35 Ho, Ping-ti, “Salient Aspects of China's Heritage,” in Ho, Ping-ti and Tsou, Tang, eds., China's Heritage and the Communist Political System (Chicago 1968).Google Scholar

36 Hsiao, Kuang-chuan, Rural China: Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century (Seattle 1960)Google Scholar, passim.

37 Ch'u, Tung-tsu, Local Government in China Under the Ch'ing (Cambridge, Mass. 1962).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 Among studies that also attempt to account for the oft-noted Chinese submissive-ness to authority, I would single out Fei (fn. 18), and Hsu, Francis L. K., “The Effect of Dominant Kinship Relationships on Kin and Non-Kin Behavior: A Hypothesis,” American Anthropologist, LXVII (June 1965), 638–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Contrary to Solomon, Hsu argues in this article that “the individual reared in the father-son dominated system [an example of which being the traditional Chinese society] will have no resentment against benevolent authority, in fact, he will love it” (653). Consider also the following statements by Hsu: “[In a father-son dominated system] the superior does not have to disguise his power because he knows this is his due, and the subordinate has no need to disguise his obeisance since it is not necessary to be ashamed of it. Authority and compliance to authority are therefore carried out openly and elaborately with no qualms on either side. Difficulties may arise if the superior becomes too oppressive, but the salvation of the oppressed lies in finding individual relief from it, not in changing the entire social structure in which such oppression occurs” (652–53). This seems to be as plausible as Solomon's psychocultural explanation for the fact that, until the twentieth century, China had experienced numerous rebellions but no revolution.

39 For themes emphasized in Chinese school texts, see Ridly (fn. 6).

40 One is reminded of President Nixon's successful capture of the White House in 1968 with the rhetoric “I have a plan to end the Vietnam War” and the promise to restore “law and order” and to stop “crime in the streets.” The turmoil in this country in the mid-1960's is lilliputian compared with the upheaval and turmoil China underwent in the century following the Opium War and the Taiping Rebellion.