VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 9, SECTION 2
Both Sides of Expansion, Different Undertones and the Chinese Samples
Last section looked at the three forms of expansion. This section sets firm one of the most important methods of this book: on all expansion, pass no verdict of right or wrong. But passing no verdict is not the same as seeing no difference. This section first sets that method firm, then looks at the different undertones different expansions carry, and finally at the distinctive samples the expansion of Chinese civilization has in history.
First set firm the deepest method of this section: on all expansion, this book passes no verdict. The expansion of the great empires of history, right or wrong? No verdict. The expansion of colonialism, right or wrong? No verdict, and though colonialism left deep historical wounds, that is a fact of history, not a moral verdict this book passes. The expansion of ideological output, right or wrong? No verdict. The expansion of infrastructure cooperation, right or wrong? No verdict. The expansion of multinational enterprises, right or wrong? No verdict. This book sees only that these are the natural results of a political institution running, with no right or wrong, no good or bad, no better or worse, letting the regularity surface on its own, letting the reader judge, not reaching a verdict for the reader. Why is this posture so important? Because to judge an expansion right or wrong is a judgment standing on some one standpoint of value. Standing with the side expanded into, one feels the expansion is a violation, an oppression. Standing with the side expanding out, one feels the expansion is civilization, development, the inevitable. Standing as a third party, one may have no standpoint at all. This book takes none of these standpoints, seeing only that expansion is the natural result of a political institution running, seeing only that different expansions have different historical consequences, letting the reader judge by their own values. This is the core method of this book, passing no verdict on any political institution, any civilization, any expansion, only letting the phenomenon and the regularity surface on their own, one of the root reasons this book can be handed down five hundred years.
But by here a deeper layer must be set: passing no verdict is not the same as seeing no difference. This book passes no verdict of right or wrong, but it can point out that different expansions carry different undertones, letting the reader see these undertones and feel the difference among them for themselves. Look back at the various expansions of history. The expansion of the ancient empires had territorial occupation plus military campaign for its undertone. The expansion of modern colonialism had economic plunder plus forced trade plus the slave system for its undertone. The expansion of modern ideology has values output plus the spread of an institutional model for its undertone. The expansion of multinational enterprises has market profit plus technical standard for its undertone. The expansion of certain civilizations has the exchange of trade plus cultural spread plus infrastructure building for its undertone. Different undertones mean different results, and for the side expanded into the experience differs. Territory occupied, one loses land, population, political independence. Colonized, one loses economic autonomy, is forced into trade, has resources plundered, the population dying in great number. Subjected to ideological output, one's inner identity divides, one's institutional path is steered. Expanded into by multinational enterprises, one is embedded economically into the global supply chain, one's way of consumption changed. Reached by the exchange of trade plus cultural spread, one can choose to accept or not, keeping one's own political independence. You might think for yourself too. The country, region, or group you are in, which kinds of expansion did it live through in history? What different marks did these different expansions leave? In the world today, how many kinds of expansion can you see running at once? These are not questions this book will answer, they are real questions left to you.
Speaking of different undertones, look at a concrete sample, the expansion of Chinese civilization in history, which has several features worth noting. The first sample, the Silk Road of the Han and Tang. Beginning in the second century before the common era, Emperor Wu of Han sent Zhang Qian on a mission to the Western Regions, opening the famous Silk Road. For the near fifteen hundred years after, China through the Silk Road sent out silk, porcelain, tea, paper, printing, gunpowder, and the compass to Central Asia, West Asia, and Europe, and through the Silk Road drew in grapes, alfalfa, fine horses, Buddhism, Islam, glass, gems, and spices. The feature of the Silk Road is the exchange of trade and culture, not territorial occupation. The Han and Tang did not take the countries along the Silk Road into the Chinese map, only building trade relations and cultural exchange. This is an expansion with trade and culture for its undertone, a different look from an expansion with military campaign and territorial occupation for its undertone. What this end of the Silk Road sent out changed the course of world civilization, and what it drew in enriched China itself, a two-way exchange.
The second sample, Zheng He's voyages to the western seas. In the Ming, Zheng He led the most powerful fleet in the world of that time on seven long voyages, visiting over thirty countries and regions including Southeast Asia, India, Arabia, and East Africa. Zheng He's fleet had over two hundred ships and near thirty thousand people, dozens of times the scale of the contemporary European seafaring, yet across twenty-eight years Zheng He occupied not an inch of land, built no colony, plundered no resource. Zheng He's activity was mainly to show the strength of the Ming, to build tributary relations, trade exchange, and cultural exchange. Here is a comparison in time worth laying out. Zheng He's voyages were in the early fifteenth century, exactly on the eve of the coming age of European seafaring. In the same age, on one side the most powerful fleet in the world voyaging to thirty countries and taking not an inch of land, on the other the seafaring that began a little later on a model of colonization and plunder. These two kinds of seafaring are two expansions of different undertone. This book passes no verdict on which is right and which is wrong, it only lays out this objective comparison, letting the reader feel for themselves how different an experience the two expansions left to the places visited and the places touched.
The third sample is the expansion of today carried mainly through infrastructure and economic cooperation. This expansion occupies no other country's territory, enlarging influence through building and economic relations, and differs markedly in undertone from the expansion of the colonial age. Put these three samples together, the Silk Road, Zheng He's voyages, today's economic cooperation, and they show a distinctive feature of the expansion of Chinese civilization, mainly through trade, culture, and building, rarely mainly through territorial occupation and colonization. This is a fact of history, not a verdict of good or evil this book passes, an objective statement. It must be specially said that in speaking of this layer, it is not said that Chinese civilization had no military campaign and no opening of frontiers in its history, and last chapter's Qin campaign south into the far south was a territorial expansion. What is spoken of here is an overall tendency, that in the main ways of outward contact, Chinese civilization historically carried its expansion more through trade, culture, and building. The reader can feel for themselves: how does such an expansion differ from the expansion of the colonial age? What is the long-run effect of this difference on human civilization? This book leaves these real questions, and does not answer them for the reader.
So here is the position this section lays down. We set firm this layer: expansion is the ultimate goal of a political institution, but on all expansion this book passes no verdict of right or wrong, only letting the regularity and the phenomenon surface on their own, the core method that can carry this book five hundred years. Passing no verdict is not the same as seeing no difference, and different expansions carry different undertones, the territorial campaign of the ancient empires, the economic plunder of modern colonization, the ideological output of the modern age, the technical standard of multinational enterprises, the trade, culture, and building of certain civilizations, each of a different undertone, the side expanded into living through a different experience each time. The expansion of Chinese civilization in history, from the Silk Road to Zheng He's voyages to today's economic cooperation, was on the whole mainly through trade, culture, and building, rarely through territorial occupation and colonization, a fact of history and a distinctive place of Chinese civilization in human political history.
But having covered expansion, one question cannot be gotten around. Since centralized authority is so effective and expansion is the instinct of every civilization, why did the centralized great state appear in China twenty-two hundred years ago while Europe walked the same road nearly two thousand years later? Was Europe's lateness because its civilization was backward? The next section walks into Europe to see why it was late, to see one thing clearly: late is not the same as backward, it is a structural difference.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.