China vs Europe

The question is raised, why did China develop a stable culture and Europe did not? Both have significant ethnic, geographic and linguistic diversity, yet one developed an identifiable central culture and the other remained fragmented. Why?

Two elements to consider:
1) China had a single written language
2) China had a functional meritocracy (anyone could test for a job in the bureaucracy)

Is these sufficient? Are both necessary? Discuss.

J

onejayhawk said:

The question is raised, why did China develop a stable culture and Europe did not? Both have significant ethnic, geographic and linguistic diversity, yet one developed an identifiable central culture and the other remained fragmented. Why?

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Contingency.

onejayhawk said:

Two elements to consider:
1) China had a single written language
2) China had a functional meritocracy (anyone could test for a job in the bureaucracy)

Is these sufficient? Are both necessary? Discuss.

J

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China most certainly did not have a single written language, unless you define China to ignore Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and the Three Provinces. Also, I don't think that a single written language means much in terms of a China-wide culture because the literate (and numerate) population of China was so tiny before the twentieth century.

The meritocratic aspect of the Chinese bureaucracy meant very little. The vaunted examinations from the Sui and Tang onward were instituted precisely to restrict social mobility, not increase it, because forcing aspiring bureaucrats to qualify through the exams meant that those who passed the exams only did so through study, which required leisure time usually only available to the well-off. It is not for nothing that shenshi is usually translated as "scholar-gentry". Furthermore, the content of the tests did not have a meaningful relationship to the tasks that bureaucrats were meant to fulfill; it would be like saying that a first in classics from a Poxbridge university qualified an English gentleman for government - an opinion held widely in the nineteenth century, but rightly regarded as patently ridiculous now.

I don't think either of those things can be regarded as causative of a relatively unified Chinese culture. I'm not even sure that causation would apply the other way around. In other words: I'm not sure why either one matters to the question you asked.

I suspect there's a bit of the Texas Sharpshooter going on here. I mean, Europe hasn't been a single political entity for as long as anybody has known the word 'Europe'. There's no particularly good reason to oppose 'Europe' to 'China' rather than 'France' to 'China', or indeed 'France' to 'Asia'. Where you put the boundaries makes a big difference, and you run the risk of finding 'distinguishing factors' that have very little to do with causes, and just happen to be things that are different between a place with a (more or less) unified culture and one without one.

You could certainly make the case, at any rate, that a central concept of 'Europeanness' has existed at several points in history. In the Middle Ages, you had Christendom, and during the age of imperialism, it was common to use 'Europeans' as shorthand for 'white people', and to set them up in opposition to 'natives'. For example, Robert Clive's dispatch after Plassey in 1757 ended as following:

Our loss is trifling - not above twenty Europeans killed and wounded

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Tellingly, he didn't even mention the number of his Indian soldiers who were killed or wounded, or even that they had existed at all. At the beginning of the battle, they had outnumbered the Europeans!

onejayhawk said:

The question is raised, why did China develop a stable culture and Europe did not? Both have significant ethnic, geographic and linguistic diversity, yet one developed an identifiable central culture and the other remained fragmented. Why?

Two elements to consider:
1) China had a single written language
2) China had a functional meritocracy (anyone could test for a job in the bureaucracy)

Is these sufficient? Are both necessary? Discuss.

J

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The EU and China have some notable parallels: Every Chinese province for instance can be considered its own nation-state, often having their own variation of Chinese, such as Wu-Chinese in the area around Shanghai, with an amount of speakers good to match the population of Germany.

Most educated Europeans speak English, just like all educated Chinese people speak Mandarin which in fact owes its official status to its usage in bureaucracy. Furthermore, the European Commission has a standardised testing scheme for would be employees, although the tests are required to be taken in a second language (meaning that a lot of British fail to pass).

Anyway, the primary reason why China has a more secure union than the EU is in part cultural: Periods of division in China are considered bad periods, such as as the warring states. A close European parallel to the warring states would be pretty much all of European history. The idea that a political union can bridge petty squabbles between nation-state is radical for European standards though sancrosanct for Chinese ones.

Because China was politically united and Europe wasn't. Simple.

I think that there's a point here about the definitions of "Europe" and "China"

Not including modern arguments in favor of knocking Europe down to a subcontinent of Eurasia, the main debate of what constituted Europe was more a question of how far East to push the boundaries. The Roman Empire knew full well they never conquered, or wanted to conquer, all of Europe. Even the Catholic Church, which is often considered a universal unifyer, never extended over all of Europe at one time. Islam and Orthodoxy had their own spheres. While there has been a desire to see unification in Europe, particularly from business men, there has been little actual practice of it.

China, on the other hand, has since the beginning been a term with moving goalposts. What was considered China in the Qin isn't automatically the same as in the Sung. China has a history of being unified because China itself is unification. Bits that before had never been part of China, once conquered and incorporated, turned into integral parts of China for now and always.

On that subject, Metternich (in, I think, 1815) knew exactly where Europe ended - as soon, he said, as you turned East out of Vienna. In case anybody's geography is fuzzy, Vienna is pretty much exactly in the middle of any modern map of Europe.

onejayhawk said:

The question is raised, why did China develop a stable culture and Europe did not?

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Did it? China has been ruled at various times over the last two thousand years by Taoists, Confucians, neo-Confucians, Shaminists, Buddhists, crypto-Christians, secularists, anti-clericalists and the odd Messianic lunatic. Each constructed their own institutions and bureaucracies, many using entirely different languages, and each in turn crumbled to dust. At the same time, Western Europe has spent the last two centuries under the strict and consistent oversight of the Mother Church, the persistence of certain heretical sects on the fringe of the Continent notwithstanding, with a single set of institutions, a single bureaucracy, a single official language. So successful has this project been, it's most recent primate has been drawn from the other side of the globe, the son of a colony first planted over two centuries ago. What Chinese throne could boast that kind of enduring and wide-reaching influence- in short, that kind of stability?

Point being- to reiterate in a more snottily sarcastic way what other posters have already pointed out- this sort of thing is often a matter of how one chooses to frame it.

Flying Pig said:

On that subject, Metternich (in, I think, 1815) knew exactly where Europe ended - as soon, he said, as you turned East out of Vienna. In case anybody's geography is fuzzy, Vienna is pretty much exactly in the middle of any modern map of Europe.

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Also, Africa is just south of Rome. Italo Garibaldi made sure of that!

The borderlines of Europe, particularly those with Asia are largely based on subjective cultural distinctions. The concept of Asia was invented to describe Anatolia, then that plus the Middle East, finally including such countries as China into the definition of Asia too. From a physical geographical viewpoint, it would make much more sense to view Europe and Asia as one.

Traitorfish said:

Did it?

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It did. You are all quibbling. The point is frequently made China swallows its conquerors. Names changed on dynasties but China continued on. You can nitpick, but it's good enough for a broad generalization.

Dachs said:

China most certainly did not have a single written language, unless you define China to ignore Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and the Three Provinces. Also, I don't think that a single written language means much in terms of a China-wide culture because the literate (and numerate) population of China was so tiny before the twentieth century.

The meritocratic aspect of the Chinese bureaucracy meant very little. The vaunted examinations from the Sui and Tang onward were instituted precisely to restrict social mobility, not increase it, because forcing aspiring bureaucrats to qualify through the exams meant that those who passed the exams only did so through study, which required leisure time usually only available to the well-off. It is not for nothing that shenshi is usually translated as "scholar-gentry". Furthermore, the content of the tests did not have a meaningful relationship to the tasks that bureaucrats were meant to fulfill; it would be like saying that a first in classics from a Poxbridge university qualified an English gentleman for government - an opinion held widely in the nineteenth century, but rightly regarded as patently ridiculous now.

I don't think either of those things can be regarded as causative of a relatively unified Chinese culture. I'm not even sure that causation would apply the other way around. In other words: I'm not sure why either one matters to the question you asked.

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China did have a single writing--for purposes of generalization. Yes, there were many local versions, but the scholars and scribes were all conversant with a single written form. If nothing else it was the form in which the examinations were given. The key point is that information moved easily across language divides.

The point of the purpose of the bureaucracy exams is better made, but not much. Another intent was to quell dissent by giving everyone access. The question is not one of intent, but one of practical consequence. If you can argue that the bureaucracy was effectively closed and that the tests did not introduce new blood and new ideas then do so. I do not think that case can be proven.

J

onejayhawk said:

It did. You are all quibbling. The point is frequently made China swallows its conquerors. Names changed on dynasties but China continued on. You can nitpick, but it's good enough for a broad generalization.

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Y'know, in my country, there are whole buildings devoted to nitpicking, and people who spend their entire careers picking those nits. The buildings are called "universities", and the people "historians". We find them useful to have around.

onejayhawk said:

China did have a single writing--for purposes of generalization. Yes, there were many local versions, but the scholars and scribes were all conversant with a single written form. If nothing else it was the form in which the examinations were given. The key point is that information moved easily across language divides.

The point of the purpose of the bureaucracy exams is better made, but not much. Another intent was to quell dissent by giving everyone access. The question is not one of intent, but one of practical consequence. If you can argue that the bureaucracy was effectively closed and that the tests did not introduce new blood and new ideas then do so. I do not think that case can be proven.

J

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It's your responsibility to prove that the imperial examination system materially contributed to China's ostensible coherence as compared to Europe, not my responsibility to prove that it didn't (although I explained it in more detail than you did and suggested an excellent reason for why it wouldn't have done). I would recommend starting with whether China stayed together before the imperial examination system was developed, and why it stayed together after it ceased to exist. That would at least get correlation out of the way. Then you can move on to causation: establishing a reasonable link between the examination system and the persistence of the concept of China.

Similarly, it's your job to prove that a written language used by a tiny minority of the population played a role in keeping the entire population of China ostensibly devoted to the concept of China, not mine to comprehensively disprove it. On a side note, you totally sidestepped the real point of the language criticism, which was that you have completely failed to define "China". This is not a trivial point and it is not nitpicking. It is essential to your argument. And there are meaningful differences between the sorts of Chinas that people might define.

Was hoping for a "who would win" thread

Mouthwash said:

Because China was politically united and Europe wasn't. Simple.

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This is a big part of it. For much of its history China has been unified, whereas Europe has never been unified. As others have said, there is also the issue of comparing apples to oranges; why not compare China and France, or Europe and Asia, or France and Asia?

Traitorfish said:

Did it? China has been ruled at various times over the last two thousand years by Taoists, Confucians, neo-Confucians, Shaminists, Buddhists, crypto-Christians, secularists, anti-clericalists and the odd Messianic lunatic. Each constructed their own institutions and bureaucracies, many using entirely different languages, and each in turn crumbled to dust. At the same time, Western Europe has spent the last two centuries under the strict and consistent oversight of the Mother Church, the persistence of certain heretical sects on the fringe of the Continent notwithstanding, with a single set of institutions, a single bureaucracy, a single official language. So successful has this project been, it's most recent primate has been drawn from the other side of the globe, the son of a colony first planted over two centuries ago. What Chinese throne could boast that kind of enduring and wide-reaching influence- in short, that kind of stability?

Point being- to reiterate in a more snottily sarcastic way what other posters have already pointed out- this sort of thing is often a matter of how one chooses to frame it.

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Who were the crypto-Christians? Sun Yat-sen? And the Shamanists? The early Qing?

Hygro said:

Was hoping for a "who would win" thread

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USA.

Pundit said:

Who were the crypto-Christians? Sun Yat-sen? And the Shamanists? The early Qing?

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It's my understanding that some of the Mongol rulers dabbled in Christianity, but kept it quiet to avoid provoking sectarian tensions. I might be wrong.

Dachs said:

The meritocratic aspect of the Chinese bureaucracy meant very little.

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Well, hold on there now. While you're right that it did take means to succeed in the civil service examinations, it's also true that it was more inclusive and more meritocratic than a straight-up hereditary aristocracy.

Now, I'm not defending the 'functional meritocracy' assertion but I was taught in my Chinese history classes that the ideal of a meritocracy served to legitimate imperial rule and also created a common cultural repertoire for those who went through the system (whether they passed or failed), both of which helped to hold the empire together.

Traitorfish said:

It's my understanding that some of the Mongol rulers dabbled in Christianity, but kept it quiet to avoid provoking sectarian tensions. I might be wrong.

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The Yuan Dynasty was still only two people. I never heard of either of them practicing Christianity. Of course, I know jack about the Mongol rulers of China other than; a) they were Mongol, and b) they ruled China. So I'm far more likely to be wrong about this than you are.

I'm thinking pre-Yuan. Most of Genghis' sons and grandsons were married to brides from predominantly Nestorian clans, and if they weren't practitioners themselves, they were at least sympathetic to it. (More so than to Confucianism, at any rate, which didn't encourage a positive view of foreign conquerors.) At any rate, there was a significant Christian presence among the Mongol elite, at least in the early period of Mongol rule.

Pundit said:

This is a big part of it. For much of its history China has been unified, whereas Europe has never been unified. As others have said, there is also the issue of comparing apples to oranges; why not compare China and France, or Europe and Asia, or France and Asia?

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What the hell does "unified" mean in this context? Because the definition of what constituted "China" changed as "China" incorporated other regions. It would be like declaring that England has been unified since the 7th century because Wessex controlled all of Wessex, then after incorporating Mercia and Northumbria, England controlled all of England, then after Wales...then after Scotland...etc.

Owen Glyndwr said:

What the hell does "unified" mean in this context? Because the definition of what constituted "China" changed as "China" incorporated other regions. It would be like declaring that England has been unified since the 7th century because Wessex controlled all of Wessex, then after incorporating Mercia and Northumbria, England controlled all of England, then after Wales...then after Scotland...etc.

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Simply that there has been a political entity recognised as China existing for a long period of time. You could make the same arguments about Egypt, or Persia/Iran. My whole point is that it's fairly arbitrary.