East and West: Understanding the Rise of China
by Y.J. Choi

Innumerable articles and books have been written about East Asia and China since this part of the world has been catapulted into the center of the global economic scene. Unfortunately, most, if not all of them, are wide of the mark in terms of understanding the geographic and philosophical fundamentals of Eastern civilizations undergirding the rise of the East. The relative decline of the West appears to be inevitable as the ascendance of the East prompts a shift of the center of gravity from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Accordingly, we need to understand the East (and the West, for that matter) by freeing ourselves from the centuries-old habit of West-centrism. Neither in the West nor in the East do we find a paper written with a balanced approach regarding the two civilizations. Because of this, and thanks to his vast experience in both East and West, Ambassador Y.J. Choi was prompted to explain this epochal change by comparing the two civilizations on equal footing. His text constitutes the very first book attempting an objective, neutral and balanced comparison of ancient Eastern and European/Mediterranean civilizations, including their influence on and implications for contemporary events.

EAST AND WEST

UNDERSTANDING THE RISE OF CHINABy Y. J. Choi

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2010 Y. J. Choi
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4502-6542-3

Contents

Preface.......................................................................................1Chapter 1 Context: Maritime West vs. Continental East.........................................13Chapter 2 Man and Nature: Western God vs. Eastern Tao.........................................53Chapter 3 Mind and Body: Western Spirit vs. Eastern Man.......................................107Chapter 4 Man and Man: Western Law vs. Eastern Ethics.........................................165Chapter 5 Role Model: Western Hero vs. Eastern Junzi..........................................223Chapter 6 Culture: Western Religion vs. Eastern Education.....................................271Chapter 7 Civilization: Vasco Da Gama vs. Cheng Ho............................................311Chapter 8 Industrial Revolution: Western Paradigm and Eastern Fundamental.....................355Chapter 9 Political Economy: Western Invisible Hand and Eastern Wuwei.........................399Chapter 10 The Twenty-First Century: Paradigm Shift and Global Governance.....................451Author's Note on References...................................................................491Index.........................................................................................551

Chapter One

Context: Maritime West vs. Continental East

"Europe and China ... as the most cultivated and distant peoples stretch out their arms to each other, those in between may gradually be brought to a better way of life." Leibniz "The sailor relies upon himself amid the fluctuations of the waves, and eye and heart must be always open.... We see the nations freed from the fear of Nature and its slavish bondage." Hegel

Mare Nostrum vs. Central Plain

How and why have human beings developed different civilizations? If Easterners and Westerners were in fact peoples with inherently different biological capacities, we would be able to assign the problem to evolution alone. This was the solution adopted by many important Western thinkers of the Enlightenment, from Hume to Kant and Hegel. But if, on the other hand, we are members of the same species—Homo sapiens—with the same mental capacities, as Western genetics has now surely proven, then cultural differences must have originated from man's varying interactions with his environment. These interactions between Man and Nature ultimately gave rise to distinct civilizations.

Environmental Distinction between West and East

How do the environments of East and West differ? Western civilization began and developed around the sea, whereas Eastern civilization—denoting, in this book, China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Vietnam—developed in a heartland. There was little connection between the two, due to their separation by the highest mountain chain in the world, the Himalayas. Kept apart by this "roof of the world," the West developed its culture partly as a result of lively interactions with the Middle East and India, which were inaccessible to the East.

In comparing the two cultures, it will be useful to consider their respective geographies. Let us imagine a map of world civilizations from two to three thousand years ago. I suggest this period because this was when the civilizations of East and West first acquired their distinctive characters. Such a map would show only two cultural regions at either end of the Eurasian continent: the Western part comprised southern Europe, the Middle East, and India, as well as northern Africa; while the Eastern part embraced China, Korea, Japan, and southern Mongolia. East and West were linked by a single trade route, hardly visible on the map—the Silk Road.

Indeed, the separation of these two regions at the two ends of the Eurasian continent gave rise to the long-lasting distinctness of their respective cultures. It was only during the past two to three centuries that the West's respect for the East evaporated, in favor of a Eurocentric world vision, following its conquest of the entire known world in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. In fact, some early modern philosophers admired Eastern civilization and expressed hope for the future of mankind.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) clearly expressed this optimism: "I consider it a singular plan of the fates that human cultivation and refinement should today be concentrated, as it were, in the two extremes of our continent, in Europe and in China, which adorns the Orient as Europe does the opposite edge of the earth. Perhaps Supreme Providence has ordained such an arrangement, so that, as the most cultivated and distant peoples stretch out their arms to each other, those in between may gradually be brought to a better way of life."

What were the seeds of these two civilizations? How did they begin, and how did they grow to maturity? Our imaginary map as illustrated in Figure 1-1 would show that by the third century bc, Europe, the Middle East, and India interacted via trade, invasions, and war. Despite cultural and linguistic differences, these civilizations knew much of each other. Of East Asia, however, they knew virtually nothing beyond its existence. The reverse was also true: the East knew little of the West except for the vague idea that it existed.

If we focus on Europe, we find that it was formed around the Mediterranean Sea. On the other hand, the East remained alone, firmly rooted on the East Asian continent without interaction with Europe, the Middle East, or even India. We may therefore conclude that the sea constituted the West's central location, and that it represented primarily an opportunity; whereas for the East, it represented an obstacle. One may even go so far as to say that the Mediterranean gave birth to the West, after which the Renaissance—its rebirth—led the West to the Atlantic, and eventually to the Pacific.

The Eastern world remained isolated by the Himalayas to the west, the unnavigable Pacific to the east, deserts and tundra to the north, and jungles to the south. But what distinguishes East Asia from other agricultural regions is that the space circumscribed by these obstacles was large enough to produce a complete and sophisticated civilization. The West, on the other hand, with its easy access to the sea, was able to expand beyond its immediate physical borders. In light of these respective environments, we can figuratively refer to the Western world as "expansive" and to the Eastern world as "circumscribed."

To illustrate: for the Romans, the center of the world was the Mediterranean or Mare Nostrum ("our sea"), whereas for the Chinese, the center of the world was deep in the heartland, Chungwon or Central Plain. Rome fought the three Punic Wars against Carthage (First, 264–241 BC; Second, 218–202 BC; Third, 149–146 BC) to assert its dominance of the Mediterranean—maritime supremacy meant overall control of the Mediterranean world. The Central Plain played the same geopolitical role in the East, from the first emperor of China in the third century bc to Mao Zedong in the twentieth century ad: whoever occupied the Central Plain had command of the Eastern world.

Western Water vs. Eastern Land in Mythology

The environmental differences between these civilizations are apparent even from their respective creation myths. These narratives make clear the cultures' fundamental contrasts in their priority of land or sea. According to a typical Eastern myth, the earth appeared before the sea, while the foundational story in Judeo-Christian theology asserts the reverse. Genesis says: "Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear. God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters He called Sea." Surrounded by the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea, and the Atlantic Ocean, the West naturally imagined the world to be a flat disc with water surrounding the land. Thus, in the West, water is the primordial element and earth is secondary—separate from water.

By contrast, in Chinese mythology, earth is the primordial element and water appears later. Pangu (the Creator) "cracked the primal egg with an ax, and the light, clear part of the egg floated up to form Heaven while the cold, heavy part stayed down and formed Earth [land]." One recurring difference between East and West should be emphasized: the East shows conformity whereas the West demonstrates diversity. It is therefore crucial to distinguish mainstream from marginalized elements in Western culture. In this case, the East's focus on the earth has been consistent, while the West has produced many opinions and views, including an emphasis on water. The key point is that water has achieved dominance in the West through a dialectical process among various elements, including fire, earth, air, and so on. As we shall see, this dialectic constitutes the pattern of Western civilization as opposed to the assimilative and consistent nature of Eastern civilization.

Earth was considered the crucial element of the universe by early Eastern thinkers, while many of their Western counterparts considered water to be the crucial element. Thales of Miletus (ca. 620–546 BC), the first known Greek philosopher, attributed the origin of all things to water. Although there were many differing views in the West about the fundamental element of the universe, the proponents of water had the most influence. On the other hand, the East was uniform in pointing out land as the crucial element of the universe. This Western view may have had its source in the creation of the Mediterranean Sea, which was formed by a vast influx of seawater from the Atlantic Ocean through the Straits of Gibraltar over the course of thousands of years, making an indelible impression on the people living on the sea's rim.

Although Eastern history was also punctuated by many stories of deluges and inundations, its mythology places little emphasis on water or the sea, or on stories of a deluge. On the other hand, such myths and stories abound in the West. For example, the story of Noah's Ark is not unique to Genesis; similar stories of a deluge appear in the mythologies of all the Mediterranean peoples, including the Greeks. The similarities between the Judaic story of Noah's flood and the Greek story of Deucalion's flood are unmistakable. By contrast, the importance of Earth is paramount in Eastern culture. Of the five fundamental elements in Eastern teaching, Earth occupied the central position. The color reserved for the use of the emperor was the yellow associated with Earth as opposed to the purple of the West, a color derived from the marine murex. It is also worth noting that the body of Pangu, according to Chinese mythology, is dispersed to form the various parts of the Earth.

Birth of the West in the Mediterranean

Greek civilization originated and developed in and around the Aegean Sea, the northeastern area of the Mediterranean. The Roman Empire, meanwhile, expanded throughout the Mediterranean, Mare Nostrum: although it also expanded northwards, to cover what is today France, and part of Britain—as well as east to the Balkans—it remained centered around the Mediterranean. At its zenith, the empire covered every shore of the Mediterranean–North Africa, the Middle East, and Southern and Western Europe. The Mediterranean was truly a Roman Sea and served as the hub of the empire for trade, transport, and communication. Even after the fall of the empire in the fifth century, the Western world still revolved around the Mediterranean: the peoples of Northern Europe continued to accept and follow the traditions of Rome, although civilization to the north became more rural and fragmented after the sixth century, with stronger local traditions and less connection to Rome, until the revival of papal power in the eleventh century. The waning of the Eastern Roman Empire based in Constantinople resulted in the weakening of its ties with Italy; this in turn forced the Papacy to strengthen its ties with Northern Europe.

It was only after the eighth-century Muslim conquest of the Middle East, North Africa, and Spain, breaking the trade route of the Mediterranean, that the West's political center of gravity moved away from the sea to the north. The emergence of the Carolingian dynasty (ca. ad 751–987) coincided with the rise of Islam. As Henri Pirenne observed in his book Mohammed and Charlemagne, the Papacy had no alternative but to make an alliance with Charlemagne, since it no longer had the military assistance of Byzantium, then fighting desperately for its own survival against the advancing power of Islam. In the Dark Ages, the Mediterranean constituted a barrier rather than an opportunity for the Christian West. The western parts of the sea almost constituted a Muslim lake. The Islamic naval expansion in the Mediterranean would continue to its height in the sixteenth century under the Ottoman hero, Hayreddin Barbarossa. Between the Battle of Preveza in 1538 and that of Lepanto in 1571, the entire Mediterranean lay under Ottoman control.

During this period, the Vikings became active. Originating on the shores of the Baltic Sea, the Vikings emerged as the dominant maritime power in the West, expanding their influence to the whole of Northern Europe as well as parts of Southern Europe and North Africa. The extraordinary vitality of the Vikings carried them even to North America, via Greenland, some five centuries before Columbus. But climate change caused longer and harsher Greenland winters, rendering that passage too inhospitable for transatlantic use; migration therefore ceased before the Vikings could establish sufficient numbers on the new continent.

The advance of the Vikings into the Mediterranean must have helped to revive maritime trade and transport by weakening Islam's grip on the sea. In the thirteenth century, moreover, Muslim power was also in decline in the East, due to the rise of the Mongol Empire, which extended to Persia, Baghdad, and Damascus. The subsequent Pax Mongolica greatly facilitated the expansion of international trade as far as Europe. During this period, the West received and further developed such important technologies as gunpowder, paper, printing, and the compass. Thanks to this renewal of Mediterranean life and increased international trade, the West was ultimately able to emerge from the Middle Ages and usher in the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery.

It is no coincidence that it was not Venice—an Eastern Mediterranean maritime power trading with the Ottoman Empire—but the Western powers of Genoa, Spain, and Portugal that first began to explore the opportunities presented by the Atlantic. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the Ottomans deprived the West of the Black Sea trade. But by this time, seafaring had made an important advance: maritime powers could now use sails, as well as the magnetic compass and gunpowder imported from the East, instead of depending on galleys propelled by oars. This availability of new technology coincided with the emergence of nation-states in the West, which provided extraordinary vitality through mutual competition. The early rivalry between Portugal and Spain was a case in point. Thus, the West, which was born and grew in and around the Mediterranean, could now venture into a much larger ocean, the Atlantic, and eventually into the largest and the most inhospitable ocean on earth, the Pacific. The sea presented opportunities to the West, as it offered an open trade route with easy access to transport and communication. As a result, Western civilization naturally developed with all the characteristics favored by an expansive worldview.

Birth of the East in the Central Plain or "All within the Four Seas"

Eastern civilization, by contrast, was overwhelmingly landlocked. As we have already seen, four barriers determined the environment of the Eastern world: the Pacific Ocean to the east, the Himalayas to the west, the Gobi Desert to the north, and jungles to the south. The importance of the Central Plain in Chinese culture is clear even in the language used to describe it. In the Chinese language, "all within the four seas"—that is, the East Asian landmass—denoted everything in the world. Westerners, on the other hand, with their expansive and centrifugal perspective, spoke of the "four corners of the world." The sea was perceived as a barrier throughout the Chinese world. Figures 1-2 and 1-3 demonstrate clearly how the West was formed around the sea, the Mediterranean, whereas the East centered on a landmass, the Central Plain.

The vastness of the Central Plain, with its large population supported by intensive rice cultivation, provided the East a circumscribed continental environment opposed in character to the West's maritime, expansive environment. The size of the population determined the magnitude of the civilization that developed: both East and West had sufficient numbers of inhabitants to evolve a full-fledged civilization. The geography of the East also facilitated the syncretic and eclectic tendency among Eastern philosophical schools to intermix, borrow from, share with, and assimilate each other's core concepts. This constitutes a clear contrast with the Western schools of philosophy, which had a tendency to evolve in an exclusive, competitive, and dialectic way more than an eclectic and syncretic fashion.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from EAST AND WESTby Y. J. Choi Copyright © 2010 by Y. J. Choi. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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