Research Essay: Portrayal of China in Western Media

COM304 Portrayal of China in Western Media

Module leader: Dr. Zhen Troy Chen

Office hours: HS323, Fridays @2-4pm

Week 5 Agenda

• Week2: Historical review and critique • A closer look at earlier encounters

between East and West

• Examples • Seminar preparation

Week2: Part II

• Contact between West and East over 8 centuries • Changing discourses around China • In Orientalism (1978) Edward Said linked Western

discourse on the Orient to projects of domination, arguing that for over two thousand years ‘the West’ had constructed ‘the East’ as an inferior and essentially unchanging ‘Other’.

What is sinophilia?

• Sinophile: One who admires China, its people, or its culture. • Sinophilia: a strong interest in the country, culture,

or people of China.

• “The rise of Sinophilia and Sinophobia will impact the political, geo-strategic, and cultural situation in the region, working either to speed up or to slow down Chinese expansion in it. The Central Asian states are at once desirous of the growing Chinese presence, wanting to take advantage of its economic dynamism and geo- strategic influence, but also fearful of its potential demographic and cultural clout” (Peyrose, 2015).

What is sinophilia?

• Sinophile/Chinophile defined by Wikipedia: a person who demonstrates a strong interest and love for Chinese culture or its people. It is also commonly used to describe those knowledgeable of Chinese history and culture (such as scholars and students), non-native Chinese language speakers, pro-Chinese politicians, and people perceived as having a strong interest in any of the above.

Interests

• Chinese cuisine • Chinese architecture • Varieties of Chinese language (typically Mandarin or Cantonese) • Chinese calligraphy and artwork • Chinese astrology or horoscopes • Ancient art of feng shui • Daoism • Chan Buddhism • Chinese philosophy – Confucianism

Interests

• Martial arts, such as variants of kung fu • Politics of China, the Communist Party of China, socialism with

Chinese characteristics, Maoism, Dengism, one country, two systems, the Mass Line, politics of Taiwan

• Traditional cultural Han Chinese clothing (Hanfu), and Manchu- influenced Chinese clothing (qipao)

• Chinese tea culture • Chinese wine culture and baijiu • The Chinese arts, encompassing poetry, literature, music, and

cinema, as well as Chinese traditional forms of theatrical entertainment such as xiangsheng and operas

Jesuit Exploration

• The end of 16c: romantic tales and vague references • Print: writings and journals sent to be the West • The society of Jesus, 1540 • Historical background: Spanish and Portuguese expansion in

both Latin America and Asia

• Example: Macao, Fuzhou/quanzhou, and Ningbo

Jesuit Exploration

• Ningbo: 1628 (Ming dynasty) • Cathedral: 1648 (Late Ming,

later destroyed by Qing)

• Consolidated since 1582: Jesuit missionaries arrived • The Jesuits aimed to convert China by winning over the

Emperor and the Confucian elite, so they learned Chinese, translated the works of Confucius, treated local customs with respect, played down aspects of Chinese culture that they did not like and emphasised points of compatibility between Confucianism and Christianity.

• We are almost the same, hence, easy to be converted. • Critical discourse 1: Compromised ‘pagan practices’ such as

Confucianist rituals faced challenges from other Catholics.

1. Early Western discourses on China

• The writings of the Jesuits were turned to very different purposes by Enlightenment intellectuals like Voltaire, who were campaigning against the power of the church, working to end religious persecution and promoting themselves as advisors to rulers and architects of reform – to advance the modernity project

• Critical discourse 2: intellectuals like Rousseau concern the attempts by European monarchs to impose absolute rule might be defeated, forcing them to share power under a ‘balanced constitution’.

• These intellectuals transformed China into a warning of the dangers of absolutism, casting its ‘philosopher king’ in the role of an Oriental despot who used religion and intimidation to enforce his rule. At first the discourse gained only minority support, but in the second half of the eighteenth century it became increasingly important.

1. Early Western discourses on China 他山之石可以攻玉

• Ricci served the Ming court (150 years of engagement) • Introduce Chinese philosophy to Europe (1662, 1687

two books)

• In 1700, British captain from the East India Company started to report to the British authorities

• China Illustrata (Kircher, 1667)

Examples

• The philosopher king – the mandate of Heaven 天命 • Montesquieu (born January 18, 1689; died February 10,

1755) with Voltaire and Rousseau, an intellectual pioneer of the French bourgeois revolution (Hou, 2014).

• Did not know China at firsthand (The Chan’s Great Continent, Spence, 1998: 33-35)

Examples

• “Like those that had come before, Ricci's portrait of China was strongly favorable. In contrast to the fragmented states Europe, China offered a picture of a vast, unified, well-ordered country, held together by a central controlling orthodoxy, that of Confucianism.

• Of Confucius himself, Ricci wrote that "if we critically examine his actions and sayings as they are recorded in history, we shall be forced to admit that he was the equal of the pagan philosophers and superior to most of them.

• Though directed at a distance by reclusive emperors, the daily administration of the country was in the hands of a professional bureaucracy selected by a complex hierarchical examination based on merit.

• Social life was regulated by complex laws of ritual and deportment that induced social harmony.”

Examples

• The working classes knew their place, marriages were harmoniously arranged by the young people's parents, and the practice of foot- binding kept the women chastely at home.

• The classical Chinese language itself was so difficult that the years spent in mastering it curbed the "youthful licentiousness" to which China's young men might otherwise have been prone.

• China's patent distrust of foreigners could be easily explained by their worries over national security and the unsettling effect of newcomers and merchants on their long-established ways.

• Even the Chinese mode of drinking alcohol was so well controlled that hangovers were virtually unknown.”

Examples

• Given this generally favorable depiction of Chinese moral and social life, Ricci was at some pains to point out why the Chinese were resistant to the appeals of Christianity.

• He explained this by a number of factors: one was the dominant role of Buddhism in China, which Ricci described harshly as a mass of primitive superstitions, fostered by uneducated and often immoral monks and priests.

• Another was the deeply entrenched belief in astrology, which had replaced scientific astronomy as the primal mode for studying the heavens, and had come to dominate many levels of Chinese decisions over private and public life.

• Overlapping in some ways with both these aspects, but also raising new elements and problems, was the system of Chinese ancestor worship. Ricci spent many years pondering these ceremonies, and their relationship to the conversion procedure. Since it became clear that most Chinese could not be persuaded to embrace Christianity if they were also told to give up the homage they paid to their ancestors, Ricci redefined ancestral worship.

Examples

• He concluded that the Chinese rites to ancestors were acts of homage to the departed rather than religious invocations designed to obtain favors or benefit. The same in essence was true of Chinese ritual ceremonies in the name of Confucius.

• Accordingly, Chinese might continue to observe such ceremonies even after they had been converted to Christianity. (They should, however, be persuaded to give up their concubines before conversion.)

Examples

• In choosing the Chinese characters that should be used to translate the Christian monotheistic concept of God, Ricci took another characteristically ingenious yet compromising stance.

• He decided that the two Chinese characters Shang-di 上帝, connoting something approximating the "Lord-of-all" or "Highest Ruler," could be retained for use in the new context. This was partly because current Chinese use of Shang-di was not religious in the Christian spiritual sense.

• Imposing western values to a strange and far China (Bailey, 2012)

Examples

Food and/or medicine?

• Ren Shen • Yan wo • Etc….

Food and/or medicine?

• Anti-malaria quinine cured Kangxi • However, the Jesuits were

comparing and praising Chinese medical practices on how ’small pots’ were cured.

Trade: The Ancient Silk Road

• Michael Wood • born on July 23, 1948 in

Manchester. He is a writer and actor, known for The Great British Story.

• 2016: Six-part TV mini- series documentary, The Story of China by the BBC.

Trade: The Ancient Silk Road

Trade: The Ancient Silk Road

Trade: The Ancient Silk Road

Trade: The Ancient Silk Road

Trade: Silk, spice, and many more

• A case study: https://www.scmglobe.com/the-silk- road-first-global-supply-chain/

• Economic, social, political and cultural reasons • BBC: The Story of China EP2: Silk Roads & China

Ships 2016 (Michael Wood 1-6)

• https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1rs411g7UY?fro m=search&seid=11829866932887811405

Trade: The Ancient Silk Road

Trade: The Ancient Silk Road

BRI – Belt and Road Initiative

• President Xi Jinping launched his ”New Silk Road” initiative in 2013

• https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/ 05/03/401980467/china-promises-46-billion-to- pave-the-way-for-a-brand-new-silk-road

• https://www.huffpost.com/entry/pax-mongolica- china-silk-road_b_7633700

BRI – Belt and Road Initiative

• https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/ 05/03/401980467/china-promises-46-billion-to- pave-the-way-for-a-brand-new-silk-road

• https://www.huffpost.com/entry/pax-mongolica- china-silk-road_b_7633700

• BBC: The Story of China ep2: The Silk Road 2016 (Michael Wood 1-6) https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Ct41117Yv?from=search&seid=139464407970259945 81

• NHK & CCTV: Silk Road (1-12) 1983 https://www.bilibili.com/video/av8834658/?spm_id_from=333.788.videocard.0

• *BBC: The Silk Road 2016 (China, Central Asia and The Middle East) https://www.bilibili.com/bangumi/play/ep255343?from=search&seid=1027903929348189 0900

• BBC: China’s New Silk Road 2017 • CCTV: Maritime Silk Road (1-7)

https://www.bilibili.com/bangumi/play/ep199366?from=search&seid=1027903929348189 0900

• Doing Business With The World by CCTV (1-7) https://www.bilibili.com/video/av39086161/?p=3

Relevant documentaries

• China Story by CCTV https://www.bilibili.com/bangumi/play/ep207082/

• LeTV: Fengshui https://www.bilibili.com/video/av3660285

• China UK co-production: Secret China https://www.bilibili.com/bangumi/play/ep244420/

• BBC: China in six easy pieces, 2013 https://www.bilibili.com/video/av22856958

Relevant documentaries

• The reading guideline has been uploaded in ICE • 2 short chapters • See you at 3pm for the BBB session! • Thank you!

Assignment for Week 5