Chen Heng | the Activation of Culture and the Fusion of Ideas: Reading "The Great Changes in Chinese Thought and Culture in the Past Four Hundred Years"

** A breakthrough in "Western-centrism"

The American historian Fairbank believes that Chinese society has long been basically stagnant, lacking the motivation to break through the traditional framework from within, so it is characterized by a cycle of repetition, and only after the western shock of the mid-19th century can the traditional framework be broken and move towards modern society. This is the Well-known Fairbank "shock-response" model in academia, a Western-centered view of history in modern society. However, with the upsurge of the world political situation after World War II and the contradictions within Europe and the United States, a new view of history began to emerge, that is, Ke Wen's "China-centric view", that is, the discovery of history in China, which emphasized that China's modern development lies in its internal forces, not the external forces of the West. In the book "The Great Divergence", Peng Mulan emphasized that the economy of the pre-industrial revolution era in the West did not have advantages, and the occurrence of the industrial revolution in the West was accidental, that is, the use of coal in the United Kingdom and the development of the New World market were the root causes of the industrial revolution that was first launched in Britain. Although Peng Mulan's views are debatable, they reflect a self-criticism of "Western-centrism" in Western academia. This self-criticism is the result of the collapse of the overseas colonial system of Western countries and the development of economic globalization, and also marks the advent of the post-colonial era, so that each rising nation affirms the active role played by its own nation in the process of moving from traditional society to modern society, so as to make it clear that in the process of world modernization, it is participating as a participant in it, rather than passively involved in this historical wave.

Among the many works that affirm the participation of their own people in the process of world modernization, Professor Zhang Yunyi's "The Great Changes in Chinese Thought and Culture in four hundred years" (the Commercial Press in 2021, selected as a "National Library of Philosophical and Social Science Achievements") is one of them, and it is also a rare one. In more than 600 pages, the author condenses the history of the collision and exchange of Chinese and Western ideas and cultures in a highly condensed way. From the beginning of Matteo Ricci's entry into China with Western studies in the late Ming Dynasty, and then through the tortuous middle of the Qing Dynasty, and finally with the large-scale introduction of Western studies into China since the late Qing Dynasty, Chinese thought, Western thought and Marxism finally converged into an ideological trend, thus changing the entire ideological circle of China and completing the unprecedented mainstream cultural transformation in China's thousands of years of history. Judging from the acquaintance and encounter of Chinese and Western philosophies, Matteo Ricci's entry into China with Western studies was the source of Marxism's entry into China in the 19th century and the "prehistoric history" of Chinese Marxist thought, and the final acceptance of Marxism in China was the result of the long-term collision and exchange of Chinese and Western ideologies and cultures, and the inevitable mutual stirring of ideology and culture around the world, and the Chinese ideological circles completed the mainstream of Chinese Marxism The confluence of "East and West Horses". The logic of this ideological process is very clearly displayed in the book "The Great Changes in Chinese Thought and Culture in the Past Four Hundred Years".

** A book that fills in the gaps

The book combines the history of philosophy, the history of ideas, and the history of scholarship, and is a rare work that fills in the gaps.

First, the book deals well with the relationship between macro and micro narratives. In the course of 600,000 to 700,000 words, the author surveys the historical picture of the cultural exchanges between Chinese and Western thoughts over the past 400 years, and narrates this magnificent historical process from a macroscopic perspective; on the other hand, the author is able to establish a theory center for the exchange of Chinese and Western ideas and cultures, make many elaborate descriptions, and conduct in-depth analysis and interpretation of this period of history. Therefore, the macroscopic narrative and micro-analysis are perfectly presented through the author's hand in the book "The Great Changes in Chinese Thought and Culture in the Past Four Hundred Years". The author takes four centuries as a unit of investigation, but does not fall into the kind of "only see the forest and do not see the trees", but takes into account both macroscopic and microscopic, seeing both the forest and the trees, and under the framework of the grand narrative, it contains a nuanced description of a single historical event or person.

The second feature of the book is a powerful refutation of "Western-centrism" The author believes that the spread of Chinese and Western ideas is not one-way, but two-way: "For European readers, only by reading Western translations that introduce Chinese thought and scholarship can they be regarded as real interaction and exchange, and the Jesuits represented by Matteo Ricci, their greatest contribution is here - they have shown a splendid picture of Chinese thought and culture in front of the eyes of Westerners through the translation of Chinese Confucian classics, and since then, Confucius's great name has spread far and wide to Western Europe, and China has become a model of civilization to which European thinkers in the Enlightenment era aspired." From this point of view, the author believes that since Marx and Engels absorbed and transformed everything valuable in the development of human thought and culture, then Marxism undoubtedly contains elements of Chinese thought and culture.

The third feature of the book is that the research materials are rich and the literature is diverse. First of all, there are both Chinese and foreign materials in the text, both his own words and other family words, which undoubtedly adds its own credibility to a book that studies cultural exchanges between China and the West. For example, the book mentions that the Cambridge History of Philosophy in the 17th Century affirms the role of Chinese philosophy in promoting the emergence of modern European philosophy, and is used to support the author's conclusion that the exchange of ideas between China and the West is a two-way street. Secondly, in recounting the process of ideological and cultural exchanges between China and the West since modern times, the authors mostly use original documents, such as influential newspaper and periodical materials such as "Minbao", "Bulletin of the Nations", and "Xinmin Congbao", and its historical value is self-evident. Finally, the original and research literature are equally important. We can read both the original literature of each era and the latest results of research in the field today.

** "China and West Malaysia" interaction completes the great transformation

Since the late Ming Dynasty Matteo Ricci brought Western studies into China from the south, during the Qing Dynasty from the prohibition of religion in 1723 to the outbreak of the Opium War in 1840, nearly 120 years of Western studies were prohibited from spreading history, after the Opium War, the country was bombarded by the cannons of Western invaders, and Western studies poured into China like a tide, especially at the end of the 19th century, China really ushered in an era of comprehensive eastern learning, and finally Marxism was systematically introduced into China from the east and the north. In nearly 400 years of history, Western thought and culture have been introduced to China and become part of Chinese culture. At the same time, Chinese ideology and culture also spread to the West, promoting the development of Western thought and culture, and finally spread to China in the form of the latest form of advanced Western philosophy, that is, Marxism, this philosophical revolution is full of a critical spirit, and its result is bound to be the formation of a new mainstream in the collision of the three schools of "China and West Malaysia". The interaction of the three studies of "Chinese and Western Malaysia" has completed the great transformation of Chinese thought and culture from tradition to modernity for more than 2,000 years. As the book writes: "When the universal truth of contemporary Chinese Marxism is integrated with China's concrete reality and China's excellent traditional culture, it can be transformed into a powerful spiritual force, and then transformed into a powerful and incomparable material force." "Sinicized Marxism is the inevitable end of China's specific practice and the exchange of Chinese and Western ideas, and is the highest theoretical form and the latest ideological achievement of the interaction and integration of "Chinese and Western Horses" in the past 400 years -- this is a main line of thought that runs through the whole book, and it is also the author's innovative theory and writing purpose.

"The Great Changes in Chinese Thought and Culture in the Past Four Hundred Years" is an excellent theoretical work and a masterpiece that shows the history of ideological and cultural exchanges between China and the West. However, flaws are not hidden, and it is necessary to point out some of the shortcomings in the book. First, although the author balances the macro and micro, it is limited in space, and the author is doomed to select only some important fragments of Chinese and Western ideological and cultural exchanges, and to leave behind some minor but not unimportant parts, such as some intellectuals who are not so famous but also participate in it. Second, the book highlights the role of intellectuals in the exchange of Chinese and Western ideas, but pays little attention to the figure of the underclass in the exchange of Chinese and Western ideas.

Author: Chen Heng (Vice President of Shanghai Normal University, Professor of Department of World History)

Editor: Yu Ying

Editor-in-Charge: Yang Yiqi

*Wenhui exclusive manuscript, please indicate the source when reprinting.