The Logic of Large-Scale Political Communities: Reading Comrade Pan Yue's Article "China's Five Hu Invasions into China and the Invasion of European Barbarians"

Author: Pan Wei, Professor, School of International Relations, Peking University

First, similar events shape different historical paths

Recently, I read Comrade Pan Yue's Qiwen, comparing the three hundred years since Wuhu entered China and the three hundred years since the Germanic tribes entered Western Rome. The article explains that these two similar major historical events shaped different historical paths and different political outcomes in the later periods of China and the West: one was the dispersed feudalism of ethnic groups, and there has never been a great unification of Rome so far; the other was the integration of Hu and Han into a family, sweeping away the decadence of the late Han Dynasty to the Three Kingdoms and two Jin Dynasties, and restoring the vitality of the great unification of counties and counties.

This article carries a "fairy spirit". First, the three-hundred-year history of China, which was extremely bloody, became an exciting romantic history in his pen, and "chaotic China" became a "chinese entry" of the great fusion of Hu and Han cultures. Second, hua ou's three hundred years of history are crisscrossed and very chaotic, but it was turned into a brief history with clear clues by him in a poetic condensed writing, which only used 27,000 words. Third, he used one carefully selected moving story after another to connect those thrilling melee battles, and even more to connect the comments on the important academic views of Chinese and Western historians, and constructed a very Chinese "national" view of history that can be compared with the Western view of history.

In Pan Yue's view, in terms of forming a political community, the "universal church" of Christianity does not work, and it is inferior to the scattered cultural genes of the Germanic people. The Germanic system of genes that emphasized decentralized clans shaped the long historical path of Europe and even the West, and there was no Roman unification since then.

However, what Pan Yue wants to say is obviously more than the historical "path dependence" of "Rome abandoning Rome" and "China choosing China". Pan Yue's article aims to promote a historical view: the "legitimacy" of the Chinese regime comes from the great integration of ethnic groups, from the great unification system inherited from the Qin and Han dynasties. In contrast, the West did not think of "reviving" the Roman-style political community until the Renaissance, and still regards "freedom of division" as "legitimacy" and does not recognize the "legitimacy" of the political community itself.

2. Large-scale political community

There is a question that has long haunted my mind: Why did China form a huge political community three thousand years ago, and outside China it was only more than three hundred years ago that this political community began to form?

Pan Yue's article explores the different historical paths formed by the invasion of foreign races in the two places, not to answer the above questions, but it is not unrelated. His answer seemed to be that special historical cultures shaped special institutions; that there was a clear tension between Germanic cultural genes and the cohesion of large political communities.

King Wu died two years after his success. His youngest son, King Cheng of Zhou, with the assistance of Zhou Gongdan, founded the great unification of Chinese feudalism. King Cheng died in 1021 BC, now in 3042. To say that the great unification of China has a history of three thousand years is not a legend, but a history of faith. 2240 years ago, the Qin Emperor created the great unification of Zhonghua Counties that continues to this day, which is a well-known thing in the world.

"Political community" refers to the organic community of "land, people, national power", or the "Trinity" in the Christian concept. Because a unified government with monopolies on violence and taxation manages the people on the national territory, it is called a "political" community. Unification is a huge political community. "Big" refers to the people of the vast land; "unification" refers to a government that has unified management of the land and the people.

The concept of "political community" and "cultural community" are completely different in nature. Chinese translated the Spanish "nation" as both "state" and "nation", and there is a "nation-state" that adds snakes, plus "ethnic minorities" instead of "minorities", which has led to conceptual confusion and years of chaotic wars in Chinese academic circles. The "cultural community" within the Spanish "state" refers to "ethnicity" or "ethnic group" and is not juxtaposed with the political community "nation". We talk about "pluralism" or chaos. "Yuan" refers to "cultural community", but "unity" refers to "political community". Multiculturalism exists in all "countries", that is, within all political communities. From Singapore to the United States, there has never been a single cultural community in the world, and even Japan and South Korea contain multiple cultural communities.

What is China? From the bitter cold north to the hot southern Xinjiang, from the coastal plains to the roof of the earth, the residents of all corners of the world have produced, lived, exchanged and blended under the unified regime, so that Kyushu has been consistent, six and the same wind, forming the world's largest political community of "home and country", that is, China, that is, the "Chinese Nation" as the Westerners call it. Today, the Chinese political community has a population of 1.4 billion and covers an area of nearly 10 million square kilometers.

South Asia is less than half the size of China (4.3 million square kilometers) and has a population of nearly 1.9 billion. During the "Ashoka" period, which coincided with Qin Shi Huang, there may have been a great unification of South Asia, but it lasted only a few decades before disappearing without a trace, until British colonial rule gave rise to a sense of political community, and in the mid-20th century, several independent political communities were constructed. India, with a population of 1.35 billion, is a large political community in the contemporary world, but only 3 million square kilometers of land.

The Roman Empire lasted for more than 400 years, living at about the same time as the Han Dynasty, and at its peak it had jurisdiction over 5 million square kilometers of land. But the Roman Empire was not so much a solid political community as a confederation of autonomous provinces backed by military power. The once glorious Persian and Arab empires lasted only nominally, and were the fragility of chaotic feudalism and ethnic ravaging each other.

Russia's sense of political community was created by the 240-year rule of the Mongolian Golden Horde. The Muscovite Principality was established at the end of the 15th century (1480) by defeating Mongol rule, and it took 240 years to transform from a small landlocked country into a three-ocean power in the Arctic, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans. But Russia has vast land but no people. Today's Russia covers an area of more than 17 million square kilometers, but has a population of just over 140 million. Japan was unified during the Tokugawa shogunate era in the early 17th century, but the political community covered less than 400,000 square kilometers and now has a population of less than 130 million.

Westerners themselves believe that the Political Community of Europe, the "nation" (the basic meaning is "national", not the trinity of national/territorial/political power, which is not yet collectively referred to in Spanish) can only be traced back to the "Peace of Westphalia" (1648) in the middle of the 17th century. Previously, there were only princes and "kingdoms", and they often gave each other their territories as dowries, along with the people who were subordinate to the territory.

The Holy Roman Empire, the precursor to the German political community, lasted for about nine hundred years, but was not a political community, but a vague collective name for hundreds of princely fiefdoms. Today, the largest political community in Europe is Germany, which Marx and Engels established more than twenty years after the Communist Manifesto in 1848. Marx believed that "the working class has no motherland" and called for "the proletarians of the whole world to unite". He did not expect that the working class in advanced Europe would be closely united in its own political community and fight with each other. Only thirty years after Marx's death, European countries fought two consecutive "world wars" around this new country, fighting blood and flesh. Since the establishment of Germany, the "German question" has become a world problem, which has lasted for a hundred years.

Europe and China are about the same size, with more than 700 million people, but the "United States of Europe," or "Europastan," is still a dream.

Today, the largest political community in the West is the United States. The United States, like Russia, is a three-ocean power, but has the same land area as China. The United States has a population of 330 million people, mainly European immigrants, less than a quarter of China. The largest political community in the West emerged in the late 18th century and did not stabilize until the Great Civil War (1864) in the mid-19th century.

Since the Western Zhou Dynasty, "great unification" itself has been the source of the "legitimacy" of the Chinese regime. During the Kangxi Dynasty, more than 200 pieces of good texts that had been passed down for more than 2,000 years were selected and compiled into the "Ancient Literature Guanzhi". These include the pre-Qin political treatise "Spring King's First Moon". It was the earliest excellent article describing the legitimacy of the regime stemming from "great unification", which has been praised throughout the ages.

In the West, the political community itself has not yet been a source of "legitimacy" for regimes. What is sacred is the right of "individual" liberty, i.e. "human rights". There, on the basis of individual freedoms and rights, social rights for freedom of association were constructed, and political rights for political power were constructed on the basis of freedom of association. The state is nothing more than an instrument of the ruling clique, or a "necessary evil."

Pan Yue's article is written about the very bloody history of China and Europe, but its essence is a hymn of "great unification".

Third, the life of large political communities

Great unification is China, and China is great unification. Why did the Chinese political community form so early and be resilient enough to last for three thousand years? Pan Yue's article stimulates the author to summarize a rough answer, consisting of the following four reasons.

The first is social equality. The more ambiguous and unstable the social hierarchy, the easier it is for a large political community to form and stabilize. The clearer and more stable the social stratification, the more difficult it is for large political communities to form and stabilize.

Five thousand years ago, the Aryan nomadic tribes spent a thousand years leaving the core of Eurasia, mostly settling in the agricultural areas on the edge of Eurasia. Pastoralists with lighter skin and strong beliefs in gods conquered darker-skinned and practical peasants, forming caste and slavery. Slavery was closely linked to the capture of conquests; the Aryans, who settled in non-farming areas, had little slaves to use and no custom of using them. South American Indian farming societies never had slaves as their main body; it was not slaves who built the earliest Egyptian pyramids. After the Germanic conquest of Rome, slavery became serfdom and hierarchy, and in the era of commerce and manufacturing afterwards it became a class system. However, the Aryans encountered vast strategic depth in the geographical depth of the aryan farming areas and the large tribal alliances with large populations in the Xia and Shang dynasties. Without Aryan conquest, there would be no castes, no slaves, no castes, no classes. In China, there are "four peoples dividing their jobs," but the "people" are equal, which constitutes the basic condition for "compiling households and uniting the people" and is also the basic condition for "great unification." Since the "people" are equal and the households are all in line with the people, there is no European-style "class culture." Whether it is Chinese architecture, literature, or art, there is no such thing as "nobility". In the early years, the "Five Hus" were attracted by this social equality, and finally the Manchu Qing nobles entered the Central Plains and were also attracted to this social equality. Naran Zhide entered the customs with his father Naran Mingzhu, was a royal nobleman, died early in his youth, and could actually be known as "Naran Word". The freedom of self-cultivation and the shepherd boy piccolo is certainly stronger than the hierarchical military culture. Soon after entering the customs, the Manchu nobles and the people of the capital pouted their butts in the hutongs to fight; the skill of hunting eagles also became the habit of the Manchu and Han people in the capital to carry caged birds together. Equal social life is very attractive, which is the reason for "no outside of China" or even "no outside of the world", and is the basis for condensing a large political community.

The second is the interdependence of the government and the people. The "people" are no longer divided, and they can even "compile households and the people", and there are only two points left in the political community: "officials and people". If the government and the people are interdependent, the political community is stable and prosperous, and it can firmly support a larger scale. Officials only "represent" a certain part of the people, and it is difficult to form and stabilize a large political community. Small-scale "feudalism" excludes "great unification", because it is possible to deal with a clearly divided and contradictory "people" because of the strong force of suppressing "freedom".

Around the major question of "why government is needed, why government rises and falls", political science has formed a "meta-theory". The answer in modern times in the West is "contract", and the "authorization contract" between the people and the people derives the "authorization contract" between the people and the officials. The concept of contract comes from biblical accounts, and one of its emphases is the account of God's covenant with the Jewish tribal leader Moses on Mount Sinai in Egypt. The sanctity of individual rights comes from the concept of "empowerment" given by God. The so-called "legitimacy" of the regime comes from the concept of contract. China does not have the concept of a "sacred contract", so it uses the "legitimacy" of the regime rather than "legitimacy". The "contract theory" is full of mysteries that are difficult for secular farmers to understand: who gives whom, when and where, how to "authorize", what "rights" are granted? The contract theory is obviously not the logic of a large political community, nor is it the logic of the trinity of land, people, and political power. In sharp contrast to the "contract theory" created by the West in modern times, the unchanging cause and effect answer in China for three thousand years is "people-oriented": political power comes according to the overall well-being needs of the people; those who win the people's hearts win the world, and those who lose the people's hearts lose the world. The "will of the people" is not the "will of the people" polled on a momentary matter, but the general "trust" of the people in the regime. The will of the people is the "legitimacy" of the regime, so "the people are the foundation of the state, and the people are the foundation of the state." The imperial examination is a system of selecting officials, and the content of the examination is "four books and five classics". The first book, the first page, and the first sentence of the opening book and the Four Books and Five Classics are "The way of the university is in Mingmingde, in the people, and in the ultimate good." To become an official, it is necessary to practice Chinese family ethics and morality in one's heart and mind, and to regard the people as one's closest relatives until one serves the people wholeheartedly. Therefore, private and private, officials serve the public; the people pass on the children, the officials pass on the sages. Therefore, the great unification of China is a concentric circle-shaped political community, and as long as the officials are centered on the people, the people will take the officials as the center of the circle. Once the official engages in private activities and the "people's foundation" becomes the "official base," "those who lose the people's hearts and minds lose the world." Concentric circles to control the rise and fall of chaos are repeated, "unity for a long time will be divided, and long time will be combined", depending on the quality of the center of the circle, depending on the quality of the "official" rather than the quality of the "people", which is the Chinese view of history.

The third is the naturalness of the bond. The more the political community depends on artificial ideological cohesion, the more fragile it becomes, and the more dependent it is on the natural cohesion of the people's needs, the more stable and durable it is.

Man can create ideologies, and of course he can create ideologies that contradict them, leading to the proliferation of religious and financier factions. Emphasizing religion and doctrine, unity is temporary and fragile, and the political community tends to be divided or even to the other. "Natural bond" refers to the reproduction of human beings who raise small children and provide for the elderly. The family is to raise a small pension, and the natural essence of the political community is the mutual assistance of raising a small pension. Regardless of ancient and modern China and foreign countries, all political communities are organizing mutual assistance in raising small and old-age care, that is, helping the elderly and carrying children, helping the poor and the needy, and watching out for each other. However, the fact that most of the world's political communities place special emphasis on a particular religion and ideology has generally suffered from fragility and impatience. In contrast, successive Dynasties in China have claimed that "this dynasty ruled the world with filial piety." Family ethics "filial piety" derives from social ethics "faithfulness", and social ethics "faithfulness" derives from political ethics "courtesy, righteousness and shame". Chinese farmers yearn for the "datong" of the distant future, but in reality they suffer from both widowhood and inequality, and pursue the "well-off" of all the people in a down-to-earth manner. Inheriting the Chinese Taoist unity, the Communist Party of China now expresses its own view of history in this way: The history of the party's century-old struggle is the history of leading the Chinese nation to "stand up, get rich, and become strong"; the party's goal of struggle is to Chinese the people's beautiful life and the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. This obviously emphasizes the natural responsibility of the political community to organize small and old-age care and mutual assistance, and inherits and continues the Historical View of the Rise and Fall of Chaos in China.

The fourth is the advanced nature of the mode of production. In modern times, there has also been a fourth major factor affecting the size of the political community, that is, the change in the form of wealth caused by the progress of the mode of production.

Humans began to have an "industry" about seven thousand years ago, completing the domestication of wild cattle, sheep and pigs and the cultivation of wild plants such as wheat barley and millet rice, as well as corn and potatoes in Central and South America. Growing and farming wealth is the "primary industry". But only three hundred years ago, the "secondary industry" rose, and the wealth created became the main body of wealth. This was followed by the rise of the "tertiary industry" in recent decades, and the intangible wealth created became the main body of wealth. The main body of wealth is intangible wealth, which is likely to remain unchanged for a long time, because there is no longer a "fourth industry". The technological progress of the past three hundred years, from planting and breeding wealth to creating wealth to creating intangible wealth, has given us a new view of history in modern times -- adding a progressive view of history to the cyclical view of history of the rise and fall of chaos. Because of the backward mode of production, the unification of China has been squeezed into a backward China that is "beaten, starved, and scolded."

Today, wealth is mainly "created" by the brain. Generally speaking, the unification of the great unification is subject to "officials," and there is rarely a situation of innovation everywhere. Officials tend to "wear hats" to innovators and innovative institutions to show their achievements. However, a small number of hats suppress the law of "heroes from ancient times to teenagers", and there is no "talent generation". Keen on official projects, keen on the selection of "hat talents" and "ratings" of educational and scientific research institutions, there will be fewer and fewer innovative talents and institutions, there will be no "heroes everywhere under the sunset smoke", there will be no innovative Chinese nation. Feudalism is not as good as great unification, but the stable unification and the construction of an "innovative country" have the optimal logic of "alluding to feudalism in counties and counties".

Fourth, reverie about the concept of history

Pan Yue's article praises the great integration of Han and Hu and expresses his clear historical view of Chinese unification and Western-style feudalism. To clarify where I am, I would like to summarize the five types of historical views of the world.

First, history is the masterpiece of a single God. The vast majority of the world's population are Christians and Muslims. In addition to China's juche ethnic group, religious predestination is a deep cultural background for other human groups in the world. Monotheism is also the source of the "end of history" theory.

Second, history is cyclical. The subject of the "cycle" is the rise and fall of the human political community. The West has had this view of history since the ancient Greek city-states, because the city-states have a short lifespan. Since ancient times, China has also had a cyclical historical view of the rise and fall of the first-year rule, "long time will be united, and long time will be divided".

Third, history is evolutionary. For seven thousand years, only the primary industry, the concept of technology to promote historical progress is a matter of the manufacturing era, and the progressive concept of history was born in modern times.

Fourth, history is the result of the struggle and reorganization of castes, castes, classes, and upper, middle, and lower interest groups within groups. This progressive view of history is also unique in modern times, and it comes with the progress of the mode of production, but it is the mainstream view of history in the West today.

Fifth, history is the result of the cohesion of the political community from small to large. From many tribes to city-states, from many city-states to states, from many small and medium-sized countries to superpowers, and perhaps from superpowers to the future world unity, it is embodied in the survival competition and exchange and integration of the survival of the fittest between political communities. This view of history is very Chinese, and it was born in the Qin and Han dynasties.

The above five views of history can be combined and simplified into two major categories of history today.

First, human history has been driven primarily by technological progress and the struggles of interest groups within groups. This view of history has given rise to the following "liberal" values: from the "individual freedom" of independent liberation in groups, to the "social freedom" of the struggle for interests between groups, to the "political freedom" of the group competing for control of government power. This view of history emphasizes the social value of "points" and emphasizes that the strength and weakness of social groups are the basic units of political analysis.

Second, human history is mainly driven by technological progress and competition in the rise and fall of political communities, competing with the cohesion of political communities and an environment suitable for the innovative development of advanced technologies. Such a view of history has given birth to the values of the "big family": helping the old and the young, helping the needy, watching out for each other, and being one family in the world. This view of history emphasizes the social value of "integration" and emphasizes that the political community that can unite internal societies is itself the basic unit of political analysis.

It is on the basis of the second view of history that the author has a strong resonance with Pan Yue's article.

Source: China News Network