The way of chess

Chess?

I’ve been told that one way to gain some understanding of China is to read the massive four-volume ‘novel’, Journey to the West. A very enjoyable read, despite initially baulking at the prospect. So I stumble across a poem, of which there are many in this work, called ‘The Way of Chess’:

The best place is in the middle of the board,

The worst is the side,

And the corners are neither good nor bad.

This is the eternal law of chess.

The law says:

‘It is better to lose a piece

Than to lose the initiative.

When you are struck on the left, look to the right,

When attacked in the rear, keep an eye on your front.

Sometimes the leader is really behind,

sometimes the laggard is really ahead.

If you have two “live” areas do not let them be severed;

If you can survive as you are, do not link up.

Do not spread yourself out too thinly,

Do not crowd your pieces too closely.

Rather than being niggardly with your pieces,

Lose them and win the game.

Rather than moving for no reason,

It is better to strengthen your position.

When he has many and you have few,

Concentrate on survival.

When you have many and he has few,

Extend your positions.

The one who is good at winning does not have to struggle;

The one who draws up a good position does not have to fight;

The one who fights well does not lose;

The one who loses well is not thrown into confusion.

Open your game with conventional gambits,

And end by winning with surprise attacks.

When the enemy strengthens himself for no apparent reason,

He is planning to attack and cut you off.

When he abandons small areas and does not rescue them

His ambitions are great.

The one who places his pieces at random

Has no plans;

The one who responds without thinking

Is heading for defeat.

The Book of Songs says:

“Be cautious and careful

As if you were walking on the edge of a precipice.”

This is what it means’.

The board is the Earth, the chessmen Heaven.

Journey to the West, vol. 1, pp.228-29.

 

Is China more democratic than the USA?

Sometimes you stumble on a real piece of tripe – to wit, this supposedly challenging piece from the ‘Open Democracy’ bunch called ‘Is China More Democratic than Russia‘. They trot out some stunners, such as: if an alien landed on earth today with a political science degree (as aliens do), they would mistakenly assume Russia is democratic and China not. Ah yes, the universality of ‘democracy’. Always dangerous when the qualifier drops away – bourgeois democracy. I also like this one: the Russians are faking democracy while the Chinese are faking communism …

But let’s assume, for the sake of argument, the five points suggested, but replace ‘Russia’ with USA, as in ‘Is China more democratic than the USA’.

1. Rotation of power: The United States (or Australia, or Germany …) clearly has elections, but no rotation of power … the role of the elections are not to secure the rotation of power, but to avoid it.

2. Listening to the people: The United States’ rigged elections are a much weaker test to judge the mood of the people and the ability of the regional leaders to deal with them.

3. Tolerance of opposition, tolerance of dissent. Democratic decision-making depends upon both diversity of views and the acceptability of disagreement … If you compare the USA and China, you will see that in USA there is certainly much more tolerance for organised opposition. The process is completely screwed up, but you can register a party, you can go on the street to protest, you can even ask the president to resign. But while Capitol Hill broadly tolerates the opposition, it does not listen to it.

4. Recruitment of elites. First, the great majority of the American elites went to a few Universities. Second, the most important factor influencing membership of this elite circle is to have known a leading politician. In short, the United States is governed by a circle of friends. This is not a meritocratic system in any sense: most of these people have not had proper careers, but have simply ended in this ruling group.

5. Experimentation. My last point comparing these two systems is to emphasise the way in which the Chinese and Americans  totally differ in their view of the experimental nature of politics. Chinese political and economic reforms are organised around the experimentation of different models in the different regions and try to figure out what works from the point of view of the leadership. This is emphatically not the case in the United States: experiment is, basically, a dirty word there. They are not experimenting in the process of trying to build a governable state.

Then again, honour to whom honour is due: when read in this way, in China the government rotates power, listens to the people, tolerates opposition, recruits not merely elites but across the board, and experiments. That makes it a whole lot more democratic than the USA, or Australia, or Germany …

 

Christian hymn tunes for revolutionary songs

One of the most tantalising comments from Edgar Snow’s Red Star Over China concerns Christian hymn tunes. The book is, of course, the result of the first visit by a non-Chinese journalist to the soviets of the Red districts in China’s northwest in the 1930s. Not being particularly interested in matters religious, he notes in passing that the Communist youth organisations led mass singing every day. They were largely revolutionary songs, but then he comments that many of the tunes were from Christian hymns (p. 382).

Such a juicy tidbit leaves one wondering. Did they appropriate some catchy tunes from the many missionaries who plied their trade? If so, then those missionaries sowed an unexpected seed. Did they borrow them from the Russians, who inspired many a revolutionary movement? Or did those tunes themselves embody some elements from that intermittent revolutionary tradition at the core of Christianity? That would mean it was no coincidence that Chinese revolutionary songs were put to Christian hymn tunes.

 

What is a successful revolution?

Last week at the garage blackboard lectures, I was asked a simple question: what is a successful revolution?

I had been talking about Marxism and theology, and mentioned that the Russian Revolution was the first successful communist revolution. But what is the answer to that question? At a minimal level, it is a revolution that has been able to withstand and defeat the counter-revolution (inevitably heavily supported by international capital, as with the ‘civil’ war in Russia). When it has done so, it can gain some precious space to begin the process of constructing socialism.

That was the answer I gave then. But I suggest there is another part to the answer: a successful revolution provides inspiration for other revolutionary movements. Let me give one example, from the 1930s in China and the sheer inspirational power of the Russian Revolution among Chinese communists.

America, England, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, and other capitalist or imperialist powers had sent thousands of political, cultural, economic, or missionary workers into China, actively to propagandize the Chinese masses with credos of their own states. Yet for many years the Russians had not had a single school, church, or even debating society in China where Marxist-Leninist doctrines could legally be preached. Their influence, except in the soviet districts, had been largely indirect. Moreover, it had been aggressively opposed everywhere by the Kuomintang. Yet few who had been in China during that decade, and conscious of the society in which they lived, would dispute the contention that Marxism, the Russian Revolution, and the new society of the Soviet Union had probably made more profound impressions on the Chinese people than all Christian missionary influences combined (Edgar Snow, RSOC, 352-53).

 

From Lenin in China to the Blake Prize

A few pieces here and there, on the cusp of the bespeckled-and-bearded madness that is the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature.

First, a piece over at Political Theology reflecting on my experience as a judge of the Blake Prize in Religious Art for 2012.

Second, an assessment of Lenin in China, from a great conference at Wuhan University.

 

It was the pain talking …

… as I took this photo on the Beijing metro:

 

Is China the most civilised country on earth (part 2) ?

In China, lunch break on a typical working day is two hours, during which one has a leisurely bite to eat and especially a snooze. And in summer that snooze may go on a little longer.

Of course, the problem here is a tendency to be too relaxed, with concerns over under-productivity. So you find all manner of public campaigns to encourage people to work a little harder, be more diligent, and so on. Lenin also railed against what he felt was, in his situation, Russian laziness. I’m not so sure, since given the opportunity people will do only so much as they need to get by.

 

Chinglish: The Department for Producing Risible Texts for the Amusement of Foreigners

On my most recent trip to China, I made an extremely important discovery: all those Chinglish signs, instructions, texts and so on, are actually produced by a special section of the government’s Ministry for Friendly International Contact. It is known as the Department for Producing Risible Texts for the Amusement of Visitors. It takes quite some training to get a job in this department and the skills are subtle.

 

Is China the most civilised country on earth?

Judging by some of the more intriguing items found in even the simplest of hotels, one would have to agree:

Add a pair of socks and some undies:

And …

But what is the item on the top left? A computer mouse?

If you are going to have a one-child policy (at least for the Han group, not for minorities), then it helps to assist people.

 

And SBS outdoes Fox: Cold War remix

The Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) is doing a fantastic job, even outdoing Fox in the reactionary, neo-Cold War stakes. Once upon a time, SBS was a unique operation, established by the Australian government to broadcast multi-lingual programs for Australia’s 200 or so language groups. It still does some of that, but now it is trying to muscle in on the venerable territory of rabid red-baiting carried out with exemplary skill by Fox News. It is the sort of work that makes the Fairfax’s China reporter, the wimpy liberal John Garnaut, look like a limp lettuce leaf. Take, for instance, the recent report on China’s Olympic efforts:

China’s massive medal haul at the London Games has once again showcased the country’s ability to produce champions through its rigid Soviet-style sports regime …

While the fall of Communism in Europe in the 1980s and 1990s put paid to the command-and-control systems that turned the Soviet Union and East Germany into sporting superpowers, China’s “juguo tizhi” – literally ‘whole nation system’ – remains as entrenched as ever …

… systematic physical abuse … kowtow and apologise …

It wouldn’t be legal in Britain to train as hard as the Chinese …

Hmmm … my Chinese friends have a different criticism: the government is too concerned with international Olympic glory and fails to support grass-roots sports adequately. Strangely, that sounds pretty much like the Australian government, for whom each medal at the 2012 Olympics (of whatever colour) cost over $10 million, or the English government, or the American government, or …