Research Essay: Portrayal of China in Western Media

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Asian Studies Association of Australia. Review

ISSN: 0314-7533 (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/casr19

Orientalism and the understanding of China

John D. Young

To cite this article: John D. Young (1984) Orientalism and the understanding of China, Asian Studies Association of Australia. Review, 7:3, 14-18, DOI: 10.1080/03147538408712295

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03147538408712295

Published online: 27 Feb 2007.

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ORIENTALISM (CONTINUED)

In t h e ASAA Review of A p r i l and J u l y 1984 we c a r r i e d s e v e r a l comments on t h e r e l e v a n c e of Edward S a i d ' s Orientalism t o t h e approaches t a k e n by Asian s c h o l a r s working on o t h e r p a r t s of A s i a . We now have two p i e c e s by S i n o l o g i s t s , one by an I s l a m i c i s t , a comment on t h e film Gandhi, couched i n terms of a s e m i o t i c a n a l y s i s , which embodies some of S a i d ' s p e r s p e c t i v e s , and a n o t e on t h e S a i d d e b a t e by an American s c h o l a r .

ORIENTALISM AND THE UNDERSTANDING OF CHINA

John D. Young University of Melbourne/University of Hong Kong

The implications of Edward Said's Orientalism for the China area have generated few discussions or debates. One of the reasons for this is a general unwillingness to admit that the phenomenon of Orientalism is present in studies on China. One conviction seems to be that Sinology is so well-developed that Orientalism is basically irrelevant to the field. In the limited space available here, I would like to show briefly that Orientalism does affect the general approach towards writing about China, and that because of this kind of Western tradition of Chinese studies, China continues to be misrepresented. Furthermore, I would like to draw attention to the need for new pers- pectives on how to interpret source-materials in order to avoid the problems implicit in the 'Orientalist' approach in its various manifes- tations - and not just in the traditional scholarly mysteries of Sinology.

In a recent report on China, the American historian Theodore H. White suggested that Mao Zedong in his old age suffered from 'Alzheimer's disease, a brain disorder leading to premature senility'. White's evidence? He was informed by those who knew Mao personally, and 'those who studied the matter' . White had no access to medical reports; obviously he never had the opportunity to examine the patient. According to his editor, however, White's claim has credibility: he has mastered 'the intricacies of Mandarin', and for 'nearly two months he criss- crossed China1 . Indeed, his pilgrimage has given him all the answers. The Chinese people are doomed by the 'crushing limits of their backward- ness' , and the only solutions for salvation are population control and a massive sales effort to flood the world's markets with Chinese goods.^ White may have the best intentions for China and its people, but his approach is basically that of an Orientalist. He knows because he speaks the language, and because he was there.

White's views and methods are actually an integral part of the kind of Orientalist assumptions prevalent in writings on China. His

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case is by no means an exception. A more interesting example is per- haps the shifting observations made by one of the most prolific writers on China, Ross Terrill. His latest judgement is that 'in 1983, one sees on all sides boredom, cynicism, and escapism...students care only about their careers' . One wonders whether here he was also responding to post-Vietnam American universities. Indeed, Terrill is disillusioned because when he 'first started visiting China [in 1971], serving the people was an admonition to selfless work for the public good' . Now China is a 'tough, cut-throat society: ruthless laws cow the individual; sentiment counts for little....Instead of politics, people talk about prices, wages and bonuses' . To invoke a personal note, when I first visited China in 1974, at least my relatives were discussing prices, wages, and how to avoid the queue at foodmarkets.

Terrill puts part of the blame for his earlier misreading of the situation not only on Zhou Enlai's 'charm' but also on the grounds that in 1971, the West knew less about China than today: 'We were just discovering the simple shape of Chinese society, after two decades of ignorance.' . Now he sees a return of Confucianism for the purpose of totalitarian rule.^ Actually the 'Confucian moral rules' Terrill cites - forget self, do everything for the common good - were stressed just as much during the Cultural Revolution period.

What is most curious about Terrill's present stand is that until only recently he was chastising Westerners for not visiting China with an open mind. If in 1971 Terrill did not quite know China, one wonders why in 1979 he was still insisting that 'the Chinese Communist Party is paternalistic toward the people, but it lacks Moscow's heavy- handedness. Russian communism is an edifice of rule. Chinese communism is that, but also a social morality. Its values...have been accepted in significant part by a lot of the Chinese people.'. Now he tells us that 'the nation is ruled by a Leninist dictatorship that intends to remain such'. His current verdict, if he does not reverse his position again in the near future, is that 'China is first and foremost a repressive regime' .

It is not my intention here to be disrespectful to Ross Terrill, or others. There are plenty of other examples to demonstrate the pre- cariousness of China-watching. But what is so interesting about Terrill's change of heart is that it fits in so well with Said's obser- vation that the Orient 'vacillates between the West's contempt for what is familiar and its shivers of delight in - or fear of - novelty'. Indeed, what is even more significant from the perspective of Orientalism in analyzing Terrill's approach is that it seems to have followed the pattern outlined by Said: 'The Orient was overvalued for its pantheism, its spirituality, its stability, its longevity, its primitivity, and so forth...Yet almost without exception such overesteem was followed by a counterresponse: the Orient suddenly appeared lamentably under- humanized, antidemocratic, backward, barbaric, and so forth. A swing in the pendulum in one direction caused an equal and opposite swing back: the Orient was undervalued.' .6

To propose that Orientalism is still very much alive and well in the study of China is not to suggest that scholars are complacent

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about the state of the field. In their survey of American studies on China, Professors Metzger and Myers discussed at length the 'problem of language competence, of the narrow compartmentalization of training, of the Procrustean application of social science methods, and of the two questionable paradigms of historical change, "revolution" and "moderni- zation"1. Both challenge the paradigms of modernization and revolution because such approaches play up the role of the West in the transforma- tion of China. It is ironic, however, that the underlying motive in attacking the inadequacies of various approaches is for the national purpose of affecting 'what happens in the Oval Office1 . Even more important, what is ultimately disappointing about Metzger and Myers' call for better understanding of China is their failure to provide guidelines or alternatives on how to achieve that goal. Their only advice was that '...all of us China scholars should be more on guard against the shortcomings of our discipline and get on with the task of producing new generations of China scholars transcending the failing of teachers' . All nicely said, but how?

After half a century of studying China, the dean of Sinology in the West, Professor John Fairbank gave this message: 'Keep on trying, but try harder, to study China,1 especially when 'understanding China did not seem easy as history unfolded.1 . The chief architect of China studies is both sincere and encouraging, but surprisingly he has given very little inspiration on how to tackle the subject-matter. The only advice hinted at is that 'an area specialist is an onlooker, privileged to watch how the drama unfolds without being caught in it' .8 in short, the approach is Rankean: the facts will speak for themselves. What is not discussed is a generally forgotten question affecting various approaches adopted for studying China: when interpreting the information, a China specialist is actually attempting to understand a society other than his, or her, own; the effort is and should be a comparative one.

Perhaps because of the influence of the Orientalist tradition, China specialists seldom recognize themselves to be engaged in cross- cultural studies when writing about China. But as is only obvious, because of the nature of cross-cultural studies, facts often do not 'speak' for themselves; they must be understood within a larger cultural context. By viewing Chinese studies from the perspective of cross- cultural studies, one can be more aware of the frame of reference or approach used when analyzing the source-materials available. Here I am not suggesting that there is a short supply of useful paradigms in the general approach to studying China. Professors Metzger and Myers have discussed the more representative ones. But invariably those approaches have been used to shape the data, and are more like reactions to earlier schools of interpretation. One example is the internal-dynamics-of- traditional-China paradigm versus the earlier Western-impact thesis. Such frameworks are certainly useful, but only to a certain extent. The pitfall is that they help to reinforce one's preconceived notions, and to incline one to look only for material which would confirm one's bias.

Surely Fairbank and others are conscientious scholars who do try to keep their works 'responsive to the material and not to a doctrinal preconception' .9 There is no reason to doubt that their aim is otherwise.

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But good intentions, as illustrated by White's and Terrill's writings, to not necessarily help one to be aware of one's preconceptions. Indeed, the ability to misunderstand comes not because of the lack of source- materials: what really matters is the way they are being read. Chinese studies have failed to generate better understanding of China not because of the lack of a desire towards such a direction, or simply because most studies have been written primarily within the confines of Orientalism. What has been ignored is the provision of methodological tools on how to evaluate the sources, and on how to interpret them accurately.

In the process of arriving at Sinological knowledge, there is a missing link, lying somewhere between the sources and the approaches. To be objective and critical of the material are useful attitudes, but they are neither here nor there. What we need are methodological techniques which would force us to transcend preconceived notions, pre- judices, and ulterior motives, or at least to be aware of their exis- tence. The actual methods and problems of comparative study are beyond the scope of this short essay. The proposition here is simply that before we continue to misrepresent China, we must come up with valid measuring yardsticks and useful tools for analyzing the data. If not, our understanding of China will continue to swing from one extreme notion to another, when so often we seem to be reacting to our earlier judgements which were erroneous in the first place. It is time we stop chasing our own shadows when the reality is somehwere out there.

Footnotes

1. The term Orientalism is used here in its total meaning as discussed by Edward Said in his Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978). The eminent historian of Chinese intellectual history, Professor Benjamin Schwartz, responded to Said's work in his presidential address to the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies on March 22, 1980. But he made no specific reference to the relationship between Orientalism and China studies. See his 'Presidential Address: Area Studies as a Critical Discipline', Journal of Asian Studies (November 1980), Vol. XL, No. 1, pp. 15-25.

2. Theodore H. White, 'China: Burnout of a Revolution', Time, (September 25, 1983), pp. 24-41. Curiously enough, no China specialist has responded to White's report.

3. Ross Terrill, 'Trying to Make China Work', The Atlantic (July 1983), pp. 20-29.

4. Ross Terrill ed., The China Difference (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), p. 14.

5. Said, Orientalism, p. 59.

6. Ibid. p. 150.

7. Ramon H. Myers and Thomas A. Metzger, 'Sinological Shadows: The State of Modern China Studies in the U.S.' The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs (1980), no. 4, p. 29.

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8. John K. Fairbank, Chinabound: A Fifty-Year Memoir (New York: Harper & Row), 1 9 8 2 ), p . 458; 445; 125.

9 . Said, Orientalism, p. 326.

ORIENTALISM AND SINOLOGY

Pierre Ryckmans (Simon Leys) Australian National University

Edward Said's main contention i s that 'no production of know- ledge in the human sciences can ever ignore or disclaim the author's involvement as a human subject in his own circumstances' - translated into plain English, this would seem to mean simply that no scholar can escape his original condition: his own national, cultural, p o l i t i c a l and social prejudices are bound to be reflected in his work. Such a common-sense statement hardly warrants any debate. Actually Said's own book is an excellent case in point: Orientalism could obviously have been written by no one but a Palestinian scholar with a huge chip on his shoulder and a very dim understanding of the European academic tradition (here perceived through the distorted prism of American universities, with their brutish hyper-specialisation, non-humanistic approach, and close, unhealthy links with Government).

My task here is not to write a review of Orientalism (thank God!) but merely to see whether Said's arguments present any relevance for Chinese studies.

Orientalism and sinology

Said seems to include implicitly 'sinology' in his concept of 'orientalism' . (I insist on the word seems: the point remains obscure, like a great many other points in his book.) Said's contention is that whenever an Orientalist makes a statement in his own specialised area, this statement accrues automatically to the broader picture of a mythi- cal 'East'. I do not know whether this is true for scholars involved with Near and Middle East studies, but it certainly does not apply to sinologists. The intellectual and physical boundaries of the Chinese world are sharply defined; they encompass a reality that is so autono- mous and singular, that no sinologist in his right mind would ever dream of extending any sinological statement to the non-Chinese world. For a serious sinologist (or for any thinking person for that matter) concepts such as 'Asia' or 'the East' never presented any useful meaning. No sinologist would ever consider himself an Orientalist. (Some sinologists, it is true, may occasionally be seen participating in one of those huge fairs that are periodically held under the name of 'International Orientalist Congress', but this is simply because similar junkets under- taken under the mere auspices of the Club Mediterranee would not be tax-deductible.)

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