Bai Tongdong on Chinese Civilization

Bai Tongdong, “The Margins of Civilization—Reflections on the Historical Position of Chinese Civilization and the Progress of Human Civilization”[1]
 
Introduction and Translation by David Ownby
 
Introduction
 
Bai Tongdong  (b. 1970) is the Dongfang Chair Professor of Philosophy at Fudan University and a New Confucian moderate.  He studied physics as an undergraduate before turning to philosophy as a graduate and thus occasionally addresses scientific studies such as artificial intelligence from a Confucian perspective (I started translating one such text only to realize that I do not know enough about artificial intelligence to do it justice).  Most of his writings address issues in political philosophy, and search for solutions to contemporary problems within the Chinese Confucian tradition.  Bai did his Ph.D. in the United States, and subsequently taught there for several years before returning to China.  Consequently, some of his work is available in English, including China: The Political Philosophy of the Middle Kingdom (2012) and Against Political Equality:  The Confucian Case (2021), where Bai’s basic arguments seem quite similar to those of Yao Yang explored on this site (see here and here, among others).
 
The text translated here interested me because it seems to push back, firmly but politely, against the familiarly aggressive claims concerning the uniqueness and longevity of China’s traditional civilization.  Such claims are of course frequent and not the province of a particular group, and they also appear in Xi Jinping’s recent musings about Chinese civilization.
 
In any event, we are all familiar with the oft-repeated notion that China is the “world’s only continuous civilization,” as well as various and sundry claims about the uniqueness of China’s civilization.  Bai Tongdong argues, in a nutshell, that such claims are at best only partly true.  Civilization developed first in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, and China, happily located at the far eastern margin of Eurasia, was well situated to take advantage of such developments, if at a significantly later date. 
 
Thus if China was a full participant in the “axial age” (approx. 500-300 BCE) when most religious and philosophical traditions took shape throughout East Asia, it cannot legitimately claim to be one of the “founders of civilization,” whatever role China subsequently played in the development of civilization elsewhere in East Asia.  Similarly, Chinese civilization was not really “continuous” in that parts of China were often ruled by foreign conquest regimes, one of which, the Mongol Yuan, seriously derailed the progress of Chinese civilization, greatly influencing the subsequent development of Chinese political history in a largely negative fashion.  Furthermore, Bai insists, to the extent that “China ruled supreme” in East Asia, this was the result of a lack of regional competitors which, in the long run, left China somewhat self-satisfied and unprepared to rise to the “challenge” of the modern West.
 
Bai’s point, however, is not to ridicule cultural nationalists, but rather to suggest that they stop thinking in terms of China’s “uniqueness.”   China was and is unique in various ways, of course, and has every right to be proud of its culture and civilization, but the idea of uniqueness is often used in China to refuse to engage with other civilizations, notably the West.  In a word, Bai argues that the point is not to be unique, but instead to compete.  In this sense, he joins Liberal thinkers like Xu Jilin (one among many) who is perfectly comfortable with the idea that China is part of a universal modernity in which many more or less equal players compete for influence and advantage, and where “uniqueness” is largely irrelevant.
 
Favorite Quotes
 
“The Chinese case occupies a special place in this picture of human civilization. It was not the cradle and center of early human civilization, but neither was it completely outside of this civilization. China was connected to this center through the Eurasian steppes. Thus, Chinese civilization can be said to be at the margins of civilization. We can see that those who were outside of civilization were not stupid, but instead various random factors prevented them from arriving at the four inventions on their own, and because the insurmountable isolation of mankind at that time left them without access to them. Chinese civilization, on the other hand, which was not completely isolated from early human civilization, acquired three of the four major inventions, the exception being writing, through the nomadic peoples of the Eurasian steppes.”
 
“It is common knowledge among archaeologists and historians that during the period when mankind ascended to the next level of civilization thanks to the four great inventions, Chinese civilization was a latecomer compared to the eastern Mediterranean civilization, the cradle of human civilization, and China was mainly a recipient of civilization. Almost all humans on earth have evolved to the point that even if the parents’ generation is still living at the level of Neolithic civilization, when the next generation is exposed to contemporary civilization, it is fully capable of mastering it. From another perspective, although ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia were the first to take human civilization to the next level, there is nothing that would lead anyone to think that Egypt and Iraq are the centers and leaders of human civilization today.”
 
“In chapter 12 of Bertrand Russell’s (1872-1970) The Problem of China (1922), entitled ‘The Chinese Character,’ the author points out that even when Chinese civilization was conquered by foreign powers, these conquerors were in turn eventually conquered by Chinese civilization. He also mentions that other ancient civilizations had all perished, while only Chinese civilization survived. I remember being moved to tears when I read this in high school.  Thinking back on it now, however, the conquest of the conquerors by Chinese civilization also illustrates that beneath the apparent continuity of Chinese civilization, the specific bearers of this civilization were actually changing, just as the Chinese people were the result of the assimilation of different groups into one community at the outset.
 
This kind of ‘reconquest’ also occurred constantly in Mediterranean civilizations. When the Hittites conquered the ancient Babylonian kingdoms, they were immediately subjugated by the civilizations of Babylon and Mesopotamia. As the famous Belgian historian Henri Pirenne (1862-1935) pointed out in his classic historical work Mohammad and Charlemagne (published posthumously in 1937), the so-called barbarians who struggled against the Roman Empire also vied to become civilized Romans.”
 
“Having realized the value of different civilizations and the importance of civilizational diversity, we should promote the exchange and competition between and among them. The prerequisite for exchange is the protection of diversity. We have noted that the success of Mediterranean civilization was in fact the product of the exchange of diverse civilizations. One of the most brilliant eras in traditional Chinese thought was the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, also noted for its pluralism and competition. The later development of Europe was also grounded in the competition between diverse civilizations. The protection of pluralism means that we have to oppose the suppression of creativity within a country as well as between countries, through monopolies or other devices that create walls, visible and invisible, to suppress free communication.”
 
Translation
　　
The Prerequisites for the Development of Human Civilization:   People, Lots of People, and Lots of People with the Leisure to Engage in Interactions and Exchange　　
 
When the American scholar Jared Diamond (b. 1937) was studying New Guinea, a local asked him why the West had conquered New Guinea (and America and Australia), and not the other way around. Inspired by this question, Diamond wrote the book Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997) in an attempt to answer this question. Obviously, for humanity to be strong, there must first be people. And not just a few people, because the progress and development of human civilization, or even the maintenance of human civilization, requires a sufficient number of people.  
 
Diamond gives a very interesting example of this in Guns, Germs, and Steel. Tasmania is an island to the south of Australia. At the time it was "discovered" by Western colonizers, there were about 4,000 inhabitants on the island, and life was extremely primitive. Although they lived on an island, the people didn't even have the skills and tools to fish. Archaeological findings revealed, however, that the people living on this island had once these techniques and tools (such as fish hooks). This means that a population of several thousand people had not been able sustain and pass on even a simple technology like fish hooks.
　　
So, how was it that ancient residents of this island had these tools in the first place? It turns out that before the end of the last ice age, the island was connected to the relatively populous Australian mainland, which is where the tools came from. But later the glaciers melted and the waters rose, cutting off the island's connection. The few thousand people left on the island were unable to sustain and pass on even such simple tools as the fish hooks they had brought with them, to say nothing of developing things further.  We often see, in dystopian movies about future worlds, populations of mere hundreds or thousands of people who are driving vehicles and using guns, or even using more sophisticated technology. The experience of the Tasmanian natives tells us that if a post-catastrophe world managed to survive for more than a couple of generations, such depictions would be absolutely impossible outside of Hollywood movies. Today's human civilization can only sustain itself with an adequate population, meaning millions, or more likely hundreds of millions, of people.
 
In cases where there appear to be a good many people, but they are isolated from one other, then such a group will remain essentially a small country, unable to further develop its civilization through exchange and diffusion, competition and interaction (I should point out that when I use words like "progress" and "development" here my goal is to be neutral, referring to the complex development of things from their original, "natural" state. Whether this complexity is good or bad for human beings is another subject). Moreover, these people need to be freed from the pressure of existence and enjoy a certain amount of leisure. 
 
These two requirements (exchange and leisure) were met by the emergence of cities. This is because the establishment of cities meant that, compared to hunter-gatherer communities and farming villages, civilization was able to do more than just feed itself, freeing a part of the population from the almost animal-like subsistence activities of early man, and facilitating a greater concentration of people and easier communication. These conditions were the prerequisites for the major developmental achievements of human civilization. Advances in architecture, poetry and literature, scientific and technological progress, military development, etc., are often associated with large cities. In other words, a complex civilization is often represented by its large cities, not its villages, nor the tribes living on the plains (if there are such groups). 
 
There were few significant changes in agricultural and nomadic life until the past two centuries and the rise of industrial society. Of course, the prerequisite for the emergence of the earliest human cities was precisely the development of agriculture from the stage of hunter-gatherers, which produced a surplus. This means that while agriculture and rural villages do not represent complex civilizations, they were an important basis for the substantial development of human civilization. However, agriculture developed in almost all regions of human civilization, either independently or inspired by other civilizations, and was common to all human beings in all regions, unlike the "four inventions" that played a key role in human development and appeared only in certain regions, as I will discuss in the next section.
 
In the early stages of civilization, communication between groups meant walking, and the physical migration of peoples.  In terms of the spread of the human species (and that of other organisms, including bacteria), similar latitudes, climates, and environments should have provided similarly convenient conditions. In this regard, Eurasia is unique compared to other continents, because Eurasia (including the northern tip of Africa) has one of the most extensive and most convenient transmission belts, including most of present-day Europe, northern Africa, Mesopotamia, Iran, Central Asia, and even the temperate zone of present-day northern China. Human inventions could spread, compete, and develop relatively quickly through this diffusion belt, thus facilitating the progress of civilization in Eurasia.
 
The same is true of disease, which spread relatively easily within this transmission belt, allowing bacteria to evolve and leading to the emergence of various epidemic strains. Having paid the heavy price of massive population losses due to various plagues, Eurasians came to carry with them many germs to which they were themselves immune, but which were deadly to populations outside of Eurasia. Native Americans, in fact, were mostly killed by the germs brought by European colonists, and not by guns. This is also why the word "germs" is in the title of Diamond’s book, which talks about why Eurasian civilization conquered the civilizations of the Americas and Oceania.
 
In addition to the advantage of having the longest transmission belt in terms of latitude and environment, the European steppes constituted another unique geographical advantage. These stretch from present-day Hungary to Mongolia and northeastern China, forming a large, relatively flat corridor. The nomads inhabiting these steppes became important vehicles for technological exchange between Europe and Asia. This connection, of course, required an important means of transport, namely the horse. Although the horse is native to the Americas, its earliest domestication occurred on the Eurasian steppes. Here we see that the development of human civilization, in addition to relying on such contingent factors as geography, also relies on other contingent factors not under human control. Humans originated in Africa, but there was no equivalent to the horse there.
 
Some people will immediately point out that there are zebras in Africa, and that zebras look a lot like horses. But Diamond points out in Guns, Germs, and Steel that zebras and horses do not share a common ancestor, and that zebras are very difficult to train.  More interestingly, as Diamond also points out, Australia and the Americas did have large animals that could have been domesticated to serve as transportation or in agriculture.  This is particularly true of the horse, which, as we said, originated in the Americas. But the groups that migrated to the Americas brought their Old World hunting technology with them, and at the time knew nothing about training horses.[2]  Consequently, these animals were killed off by the outsiders before they could be domesticated. 
　　
In addition to these major environmental factors, the progress of human civilization also relied on "minor" environmental factors, although they were "minor" only in comparison with the previously discussed environmental factors.  In his book What makes China China? An Overview of the Central Plains around 2000 B.C. , the Chinese archaeologist Xu Hong 许宏 (b. 1963) cites an article by the American scholar Robert Leonard Carneiro (1927-2020) ("A Theory of the Origin of the State"), in which Carneiro argues that early states often originated in areas where conditions made life and agriculture relatively easy but which were also constricted by environmental factors, meaning areas that were "isolated by mountains, oceans, or deserts."  
 
When population growth produced conflict in these environmentally constricted areas, there was no obvious place for people to flee, which eventually led to the evolution of complex political regimes, i.e., the centralized state. This was true in Mesopotamia and in the Nile Valley, another important area of human political development, as well as in the early Chinese civilization that developed in the central plains. Of course, all of this occurred on the basis on the development of agriculture and human settlement.
 
In another work by Xu Hong, The Earliest China, he points out that Erlitou, the birthplace of this earliest China, was located precisely at the point of intersection between different forms of agriculture, between agriculture and animal husbandry, between tool cultures, and between different geographical environments. The intersection Xu describes is an example of the kinds of exchange required for the development of civilization discussed earlier, occurring in a relatively concentrated area. This intersection made an important contribution to the emergence and development of a regional civilization.
 
Thus, the key prerequisites for the development of human civilization include a sufficiently large population, the presence of a "leisured class," freed from subsistence activities, and adequate communication among them. These are all prerequisites for the development of agriculture, but also for the emergence of cities that go beyond agriculture. Moreover, the breadth and depth of communication depend on many contingent factors, such as geography (the Eurasian transmission belt), biological species, the degree of evolution of the migrating people themselves, and so on.
 
In addition, the complexity of human politics requires that a number of minor environmental factors be added to the mix. However, these minor environmental factors, because they are minor, can exist in regions outside of Eurasia and are common to different civilizations around the globe. But in terms of major environmental factors, humans in Eurasia have enjoyed a unique advantage.
 
Centers of Civilization, Beyond Civilization, at the Margins of Civilization; and the Four Great Inventions through which Civilization Advanced
 
Unlike Eurasia, which possessed unique and advantageous conditions for the progress of human civilization, sub-Saharan Africa, where human beings originated, is long in its north-south dimension and narrow in its east-west dimension, and is divided by the Great Rift Valley. Because of climate, vegetation, and other environmental factors, human migration in the north-south direction is much more difficult than in the east-west direction. Sub-Saharan Africa also did not have animals that could be domesticated as a means of transport. All of this meant that the site of human origins did not become the region that led the progress of human civilization.
 
The first stops for humans migrating out of sub-Saharan Africa included Egypt, the Near East, and Mesopotamia, all of which were part of the great Eurasian transmission belt. This exchange, combined with the fact that they were early migration points for modern humans, made it more likely that those who settled there would be the first to develop human civilization. Several major advances in human civilization were pioneered in this or neighboring regions. As mentioned in the previous section, the domestication of the horse was a major stepping stone for human civilization because it facilitated the exchanges that would drive progress forward. Most research now suggests that the horse was first domesticated on the Eurasian steppes and was adopted early on in Mesopotamia basin and in ancient Egypt.
 
The wheel was another important invention in the progress of human civilization, and the wheel and wheeled vehicles are thought to have been first invented in the Sumerian civilization of Mesopotamia. The taming of the horse and the invention of the wheel (and wheeled vehicles) expanded the area that a population could control by rapidly projecting its own forces. The first higher forms of political organizations were the Sumerian city-states and the ancient Egyptian kingdoms. The city-states were limited in territory, while the Nile facilitated the administration of the ancient Egyptian kingdoms. When horses and carriages came into existence, land-based kingdoms and even empires became more possible. In other words, the domestication of the horse and the invention of the wheel pushed the state toward large size and greater complexity.
 
Another important stepping stone for human civilization was the smelting of metals, beginning with bronze. It is possible that bronze was invented by the people of Mesopotamia, but it is more likely that it was invented by the people of the Eurasian steppes. Among the many ancient civilizations, Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt were relatively early adopters of bronze on a large scale. Another major advance in human civilization, writing, was also first invented in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, both in the fourth century BC.
 
These items, which we modern people take for granted, were the "four inventions" that human civilization required if it was to take another big step after the development of agriculture and the emergence of cities, and are common features among different but more complex civilizations. The horse and the wheel, which facilitated human communication, greatly increased the likelihood of the emergence of complex political entities ruling over a wide range of peoples. The emergence of such large political entities would also further facilitate the development of civilizations within, and competition and development between, different political entities.
 
The emergence of bronze and later iron greatly enhanced human farming, natural resource exploitation, and combat capabilities. The invention of writing made it possible for humans to better record their past experiences and to enrich their civilization through the accumulation of knowledge. Virtually all of the “four great inventions" were the products of ancient Egypt, the Near East, and Mesopotamia, or were adopted there on a large scale relatively early. The eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea fully deserves the title of the cradle and center of early human civilization.
　　　　　
These four inventions look relatively simple, but even if a sizable number of independent people want to invent them themselves, it is very difficult. Early civilizations in Australia and the Pacific islands, because of their almost complete isolation from the transmission belt of Eurasian civilization and their relatively limited numbers, did not achieve any of the four inventions until the arrival of the Europeans, even though they had their own agriculture and even cities in a sense.
 
The Americas had a much larger indigenous populations, and the development of agriculture led to the emergence of urban civilizations, and there were large polities and civilizations like the Maya, Aztecs, and Incas. But they still lacked bronze and horses.
 
Some American civilizations did invent the wheel, but interestingly, it was used as part of a child's toy and never became part of the means of transportation. The Incas had a complex system of knotted strings, but no writing. What we call the Aztec writing system made it difficult to keep track of relatively abstract things. The Mayans had the most complex writing, but it was also far removed from the various writing systems of the Old World. Thus, humans living in these territories, before the arrival of Europeans, could be said to be outside (the next stage of) human civilization. In the absence of external forces, they might have remained at the Neolithic age of human civilization for a considerably longer period.
 
Unfortunately, when external forces arrived, that is, when indigenous American populations had possibility to learn from the advanced achievements of human civilization, they were overwhelmed by the external forces, because they did not have weapons made of steel, and could not resist the germs to which the invaders were immune, nor had they recorded the lessons history had taught their ancestors. They were nearly wiped out by advanced civilization before they could study and catch up.
 
The Chinese case occupies a special place in this picture of human civilization. It was not the cradle and center of early human civilization, but neither was it completely outside of this civilization. China was connected to this center through the Eurasian steppes. Thus, Chinese civilization can be said to be at the margins of civilization. We can see that those who were outside of civilization were not stupid, but instead various random factors prevented them from arriving at the four inventions on their own, and because the insurmountable isolation of mankind at that time left them without access to them. Chinese civilization, on the other hand, which was not completely isolated from early human civilization, acquired three of the four major inventions, the exception being writing, through the nomadic peoples of the Eurasian steppes.
 
We should note that this acquisition could be either direct or indirect, meaning that they might have heard about something like the wheel, and, inspired by the idea, subsequently invented and adapted it themselves. Our adoption or development of all four of these inventions came at least a thousand years later in than the ancient civilizations of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.
 
In other respects, during what are known as the Xia and Shang periods, Chinese civilization also lagged significantly behind the ancient civilizations on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Basin. Our large cities did not appear until around 2000 B.C. In contrast, in Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt, this form of social and political organization had already existed for a thousand years or more. And as Xu Hong points out in What Makes China China, the cities of Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt not only appeared earlier, but were also significantly larger than those of ancient China, in the late Longshan period of 2000 B.C. (and the cities and "states" of ancient China in this period were significantly larger than those of later Central and South American civilized city-states).
 
Thus, it is common knowledge among archaeologists and historians that during the period when mankind ascended to the next level of civilization thanks to the four great inventions, Chinese civilization was a latecomer compared to the eastern Mediterranean civilization, the cradle of human civilization, and China was mainly a recipient of civilization. Almost all humans on earth have evolved to the point that even if the parents’ generation is still living at the level of Neolithic civilization, when the next generation is exposed to contemporary civilization, it is fully capable of mastering it. From another perspective, although ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia were the first to take human civilization to the next level, there is nothing that would lead anyone to think that Egypt and Iraq are the centers and leaders of human civilization today.
 
Is China the only Continuous Unified Civilization?
　　
In this context, we Chinese have another source of civilizational superiority: the claim that even if we were not the leaders of early human civilization, Chinese civilization is the only civilization that has been continuous since ancient times, unlike ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. But what we call Chinese civilization was in fact the result of a process. Before 2000 B.C., the land now known as China was home to a variety of different civilizations. However, setting aside the history of the Shang dynasty, especially the early and middle periods of this history for which records are scarce, once bronze was introduced into the region and writing was created, we can see that from the late Shang to the Zhou dynasty, the Shang and Zhou were virtually the only civilizations in the regions we came to call China that had writing and advanced bronze technology.
 
Especially after the expansion of the Zhou, when we arrive at the Warring States period and the Qin Dynasty, all other peoples and civilizations in the region had been gradually assimilated, driven away, or eliminated by the stronger civilization of the Central Plains. Except for those living in peripheral areas, the many peoples who had originally inhabited the area were assimilated into Chinese civilization, and different groups of people came to identify with that civilization actively or passively.
 
After a relatively short period of conflict within Chinese civilization during the Warring States period, and ultimately over the course of the Qin-Han period, Chinese civilization also evolved from the feudalism of the Zhou period to a centralized bureaucratic system, which laid the foundation for the political model of the next two thousand years. Through Sima Qian's (b. 145 BCE) Records of the Grand Historian and other classics, Chinese civilization also shaped our common historical memory, while memories of the other civilizations with which “China” had competed were either distorted or simply erased.  Chinese civilization was hence unified both politically and culturally.
 
Thus we see that what we call China’s continuous civilization itself is the result of the evolution from the great variety which existed before 2000 B.C. to the single civilization established around the beginning of the Christian era. Many other civilizations that were originally in the vast area we now call China (they were mostly pre-Bronze Age, but also include some, like the Sanxingdui 三星堆, which had mastered bronze technology, but none had complex writing systems) were either integrated into mainstream Chinese civilization, or were completely driven away or destroyed.
 
Once this integration and extinction was completed, Chinese civilization became the sole master of China and even East Asia, the leader of civilization and the source of the spread of civilization throughout the East Asian world (what the Chinese called tianxia—“all under heaven”—by which they meant the entire civilized world).
 
Therefore, the continuity of Chinese civilization, while brilliant on its own terms, can also be understood as due to the lack of competitors at the same level in the world that was accessible to China.  This explanation for the brilliant continuity of Chinese civilization thus conceals a sadness: for a long period of time, China lacked opportunities for further development through competition with rivals at a level comparable to theirs.
 
In chapter 12 of Bertrand Russell’s (1872-1970) The Problem of China (1922), entitled "The Chinese Character," the author points out that even when Chinese civilization was conquered by foreign powers, these conquerors were in turn eventually conquered by Chinese civilization. He also mentions that other ancient civilizations had all perished, while only Chinese civilization survived. I remember being moved to tears when I read this in high school.  Thinking back on it now, however, the conquest of the conquerors by Chinese civilization also illustrates that beneath the apparent continuity of Chinese civilization, the specific bearers of this civilization were actually changing, just as the Chinese people were the result of the assimilation of different groups into one community at the outset.
 
This kind of “reconquest” also occurred constantly in Mediterranean civilizations. When the Hittites conquered the ancient Babylonian kingdoms, they were immediately subjugated by the civilizations of Babylon and Mesopotamia. As the famous Belgian historian Henri Pirenne (1862-1935) pointed out in his classic historical work Mohammad and Charlemagne (published posthumously in 1937), the so-called barbarians who struggled against the Roman Empire also vied to become civilized Romans.
 
However, unlike traditional China, Mediterranean civilization was a relatively open and pluralistic system. In the early period, in this region and indeed throughout the world, there was more than one center of human civilization; in fact, there were at least two:  ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia had different languages and writing systems. Within Mesopotamia, there were also different civilizations that competed with each other and rose and fell. Although these groups all used cuneiform script, they transcribed different languages and recorded the history and literature of different groups. In contrast, because the other civilizations of ancient China lacked written languages, their exploits were—at best—recorded by Chinese civilization, basically during the Shang and Zhou periods, and their records are not only rare but also naturally reflect the prejudices of the Chinese (e.g., the habit of calling all other civilizations “barbarians”).
 
Thus, from very early, unlike traditional China or even East Asia, the cradle of early human civilization, located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, contained not just one civilization, but different civilizations at the same level of development, which made it difficult for them to assimilate and eliminate other groups, as occurred in the case of ancient China, dominated by a single civilization.
 
This group of early human civilizations slowly spread and expanded to ancient Persia, ancient Greece, Phoenicia, Carthage, ancient Rome, etc., eventually forming a circle of civilizations around the Mediterranean. Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, as the cradles of human civilization, laid the foundation for the next stage in the development of civilization. And the exchange between these civilizations around the Mediterranean further propelled civilization forward.
 
It should be clear here that these exchanges, which were essential for the development of civilization, were not merely peaceful, but also included competition and even war. In this competition, leadership might change hands. In the Analects, Confucius said that the Zhou were the inheritors of two ages, by which he meant that the Zhou had absorbed the strong points of the Xia and the Shang. The glory of ancient Greece and later of ancient Rome was also due to their inheritance from two or more “ages.”  The Chinese "ages" are in fact the expressions of a single Chinese civilization in different historical periods.
 
The various "ages" of Mediterranean civilization, by contrast, consist of different independent and developed civilizations in different regions of the same historical period. Thus, although the Chinese civilization developed continuously for thousands of years without interruption, if we enlarge our view to consider broader groupings of civilizations, then the civilizations of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, and even that the Mediterranean Basin, were not interrupted either, it is only that the specific bearers and leaders of a certain period often differed more obviously from the places and communities where this civilization originated.
 
This perspective will also help us to correct another common misconception. Many Chinese believe that we were defeated by the European-centered West, whose origins are in ancient Greece and Rome. Chinese civilization has a longer history than that of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. However, in terms of civilizational origins, Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome were not part of Europe, but instead part of Mediterranean civilization, which means that they are the successors of civilizations older than Chinese civilization. In the time of ancient Greece and Rome, most of Europe was also at the margins of civilization (although probably closer to the center of civilization than China).  In a political and civilizational sense, the rise of today's Western Europe is the result of the fragmentation of the civilization of Mediterranean Basin (in fact, talking about "Europe" is also misleading).
 
During the formative years of Mediterranean civilization, there were exchanges between different civilizational centers. Alexander the Great briefly unified the different centers, and the Roman Empire truly established a unified political body throughout the region, a unification that achieved integration at all levels, including culture and economics. For example, the development of Rome's military and highly urban civilization relied on grain from Egypt. The historian Pirennne, in the famous book mentioned above, points out that even after the fall of the (Western) Roman Empire, Roman culture, an inheritor of Mediterranean civilization, continued to play a dominant role.
 
It was not until the seventh or eighth century, after the founding of Islam by Mohammad, that the Arab world emerged and conquered the eastern, western and southern regions of the Mediterranean area, cutting off communication with the Mediterranean Basin, especially with the regions that make up today’s Europe, disrupting the system of cross-regional communication established by Alexander the Great and further developed by the Roman Empire, that "Europe" (“Western Europe” is more precise) was ultimately created as a geographical and cultural concept.  In other words, a century ago, Pirenne put forward the novel idea, widely accepted in Western or world history circles, that without Mohammed, Charlemagne, known as the father of Europe, would not have created the political, cultural and geographical concept of "Europe."
 
During the era of the dominance of Mediterranean civilization, Europe was merely a periphery of the Roman Empire, and not a separate political and cultural entity. And after the collapse of Mediterranean civilization, Western Europe had to wait hundreds of years before it once again assumed the legacy of ancient Greece and especially ancient Rome, which led us to regard ancient Greece and ancient Rome (wrongly) as European countries and European civilizations. But in fact, ancient Greece and Rome were part of the Mediterranean Basin, and Europe as a civilization did not exist at that time.
　　
Reject both Belittling Yourself and Bragging on Yourself
　　
Despite the severance of Europe from the Arab/Islamic world (which of course was not a complete severance), they continued to be the two main vehicles carrying forward Mediterranean civilization, which continued to develop through conflicts between the “East” (the Arabic world and the Islamic world outside of the Middle East) and the West (Europe, especially Western Europe). Within Europe as well, we note the preservation and cultivation of, as well as the competition between, the cultural genes of different sub-civilizations and different political groups.
 
Many European thinkers, ostracized in one place, could flee to another country or feudal monarch. The suppression of his free speech in one place could be the reason he was valued by another rival monarch. As Diamond mentioned in Guns, Germs, and Steel, Columbus, who was born in Genoa (now in Italy), could seek out another monarch if the first one rejected him, and in fact after being rejected by many monarchs, he was eventually sponsored by the Queen of Spain, leading him to discover the New World and start a new era of European colonization. In contrast, Zheng He’s fleet, which was much more technologically advanced, historically earlier, and larger than that of Columbus, disappeared once the Ming emperor changed his mind.
 
More generally speaking, after Chinese civilization became dominant in East Asia, the motivation to develop through competition gradually faded, and even some attributes of advanced civilization may have been lost at moments when the single “mother lode” suffered.  This may be the deeper reason why China has been "backward" and "bullied" for the past nearly 150 years.
 
However, let me be clear that I am not talking about traditional China’s “closed” nature, which is something we hear a lot. I am saying that China was at the margins of the world’s dominant civilizational circle, but not outside of it. From the beginning, Chinese civilization has been in communication with the Mediterranean Basic. Three of the four great inventions mentioned above, which contributed to the progress of human civilization, came from the connection between Chinese civilization and Mediterranean civilization. The various religions of Mediterranean civilization—Zoroastrianism, Nestorian Christianity, and Manichaeism—were all influential in the Middle Kingdom. Manichaeism, which synthesizes the ideas of different religions, is a result and example of the collision of different cultural exchanges within Mediterranean civilization at the religious level.  
 
An even greater influence on Chinese culture was the transmission of Islam and even Buddhism into China. Buddhism, in particular, was not only accepted by traditional China, but eventually became Chinese Buddhism, which in turn became the source of Buddhism for East Asia, an example of a civilizational export from China and traditional East Asia in general. And one of the major variants of Confucianism, Song-Ming Neoconfucianism, can be said to have resulted from Confucianism’s clash with Buddhism. In the late Ming period, the religion, philosophy, and science brought by the Jesuits had a certain impact, but these exchanges were eventually stopped. The main reason for this was not because China was "closed," but was instead due to struggles within the Catholic Church and its refusal to compromise on the question of Chinese rites.  
 
In the context of China’s supposedly having been “closed,” there are also those who argue that traditional China was a “super-stable” society, which is just as wrong as the closed-door theory. China's relatively slow political progress between the foundation of the empire in the 3rd century B.C. dynasties and its encounter with the modern West was not due to any super-stable system, but to the fact that there were no civilizational rivals in the world at hand. Even when a particular dynasty collapsed, there was no better civilizational option in the visible world, and the next dynasty would naturally return to the same beaten path.
　　
Therefore, the true shortcoming of traditional China was that Chinese civilization was the only civilization “under the sun,” and there was no competition or conflict with civilizations at equal or higher levels. Moreover, the particular path of the formation and development of traditional Chinese civilization was to be selective in what it adopted, for example, the Chinese version of Indian Buddhism eventually watered down its emphasis on logic and metaphysics.
　　
More importantly, at least since the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States periods, China has been the main exporter of civilization to the "world," or at least the world as the Chinese knew it at that time. This must have had an impact on traditional Chinese interest in learning and exchange, which is of course completely natural.  
 
In terms of economic exchange, even in the three hundred years of the early modern era when Europe was on the rise, China continually produced fine goods that were in demand in Europe, but Europe could offer little more than guns in return. This made China the most important recipient of the silver Europeans took from the Americas from 1600-1800 A.D. (India was second), reflecting the advanced state of Chinese industry at the time.
 
The search for a direct trade route to China led to the European "discovery" of the new world.  At first, the American continent appeared to be an obstacle in this search, but later on, a major incentive for Europe to colonize the Americas and Africa was also trade with China. In contrast, China was not very interested in Europe, because European industries were too backward. This is not to say that we did the right thing by not actively engaging with and learning from Europe at the time, but the choice is not hard to understand.
 
In the past century or so, China has realized that Chinese civilization is only part of a broader world civilization, from which we have a great deal to learn. China tried to join this larger world system, but there were many obstacles. Later the world system was divided into two, and China joined the socialist camp and then withdrew. At that point, China was arguably at its most isolated and cut off from the world. Of course this was a recent event and had nothing to do with traditional China.
 
Because Chinese civilization was in a league of its own, its civilizational attributes were more likely to be completely lost when China came under attack. Pre-industrial traditional civilizations, even if advanced, did not always have an absolute advantage over backward civilizations, and could be defeated by the latter. When the barbarians swept through the Roman Empire, Greek civilization, the crown jewels of Mediterranean civilization, could be preserved in the Byzantine Empire and the Arab world, and eventually "resold" to Europe.
 
However, when Chinese civilization was laid low by politically and culturally backward nomads, its civilizational achievements (political institutions, economic organization, cultural achievements, etc.) could be completely lost. The most obvious example of this is the Mongol Yuan invasion. As the historian Qian Mu 钱穆 (1895-1990) pointed out, many of the institutions of the Ming and Qing dynasties were in fact influenced by the Mongols, which meant that much of the brilliant culture of the Song period, as well as the relatively tolerant political practices, had disappeared. The differences are striking when we look at the elegance of Song porcelain next to the vulgarity of Ming and Qing pieces, as well as the respect and protection accorded Song literati by the imperial power versus the court beatings, literary inquisitions, and even wanton killings suffered by their counterparts during the Ming and Qing.
 
Of course, there is also an element of historical chance here. Imagine if the Mongol golden horde had really swept across Europe, crossed the English Channel, and established a "Western Mongolian Khanate."  I wonder if Western Europe would have maintained its diverse civilization, or if the blow would have been too great.  Western Europe was lucky that the Eurasian steppes stopped at present-day Hungary.
 
Along with the Westerners' powerful ships and guns, the achievements of Mediterranean civilization once again came into full and frequent contact with Chinese civilization in modern times.  For the Chinese people the effort necessary to integrate into this "larger world" meant a greater change than China had encountered in some four thousand years (beginning with the adoption of bronze, the horse, and the wheel).
 
Now, with the rise of China's economy, we have finally gained a firm foothold in this world. Despite this, many of us still vacillate between the poles of self-belittlement and self-pride regarding the nature of human civilization and the place of Chinese civilization within it. The recent much-criticized claim that world civilization originated in Hunan may be nothing more than a joke on the fringes of academia. However, as Chinese self-confidence grows, the academic and cultural impatience and even hostility of some people becomes more and more pronounced, and arguments about surpassing Britain and catching up with the United States and rejecting the West are all over the place.
 
However, we were cut off from Mediterranean civilization (including one of its important successors, European civilization) for a long time, and the current world order and many fundamental institutions (such as the university system) have been shaped by this civilization, so naturally, we need a long time to digest its fruits. In this regard, we should be modest and patient, and not presume to reject the fruits of human civilization out of hand.
 
At the same time, unlike Australia, the Pacific Islands, and the Americas before the age of discovery, Chinese civilization used the four inventions to arrive at the next stage of civilization, and developed, in relative isolation, a distinctive version of this stage, with its own brilliant, or at least unique, attributes, which expanded the horizons of human civilization.  This was an important contribution. Therefore, we should not think that the contact between Chinese civilization and the world is simply the former learning from the latter. There is a two-way learning process here (although it may be that we have to learn a little more).
 
For example, Mediterranean civilization first developed hieroglyphic scripts, which were then further transformed into phonetic scripts. This type of writing became dominant in today’s world. The marginal character of Chinese civilization, on the other hand, allowed a non-phonetic script to be preserved. And, more importantly, it is not an antique in a museum, nor is it stuck in a primitive pictographic stage, but has taken a radically different path of development. Without the existence of the Chinese language, our human understanding of written scripts would have been greatly limited.
 
There are other things about Chinese civilization that are not necessarily more advanced, but are nonetheless definitely unique, and can at least help us reflect on the course of human civilization. For example, among ancient civilizations, only the Chinese included books among burial objects. The Book of the Dead was buried in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs and nobles, but this was a step-by-step guide to teach the mummified pharaohs how to come back to life at the moment of resurrection. This was the only book found in the tomb, and this is the sole example of book-burying in Mediterranean civilization.
 
This unique Chinese practice is an important source of the lost texts discovered later on and even up to this day. The other three ancient civilizations (Egypt, Mesopotamia, and India), all had myths about the struggle between the gods of supreme good and supreme evil, and of the life and death of humanity, which later became important sources of Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), and also contributed to the development of metaphysics in ancient Greece and in Indian Buddhism. But Chinese myths were not so extreme, nor were there any metaphysics to speak of at the outset.
 
Yet Chinese civilization is quite unique in terms of rituals and music, which gave rise to yet another interesting phenomenon. Whereas in the other three major civilizations and their successors, the military was an important symbol of state authority, the tripod, which was a symbol of state authority in China, came from the world of ritual practices.
 
In terms of politics, the American scholar Francis Fukuyama (b. 1952) points out in his book The Origins of Political Order that Max Weber identified rational bureaucracy with the modern state, which makes China’s Qin dynasty (221-206 B.C.) the earliest modern state in human history, having set up the earliest and most comprehensive rational bureaucracy. Although there was no deep intellectual exchange between China and Mediterranean civilization, during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States period, when China’s feudal aristocracy collapsed, Chinese thinkers created any number of schools of thought that were unique, interesting, and path-breaking, as they struggled to imagine a new system of government in the context of multi-state competition within the world of Chinese civilization. Compared to roughly contemporaneous Qin-Han order, the Roman imperial system was a jumbled patchwork, an insult to the word "system."
 
As they coexisted and competed with China, Eurasian nomadic peoples also copied certain styles of political management from China,  which allowed them to organize themselves more effectively. Many of their advanced technologies also came from China, or were simply brought to them by Chinese artisans. Without the advanced technology and political management methods learned from China, and without the profits generated by China's economic exchange (such as via the Silk Road) with Mediterranean civilization (and India), the nomadic peoples of  the Eurasian steppes could not have changed surrounding cultures and populations through wave after wave of war and migration. One might say that in the absence of Chinese civilization, there would have been no Turkic or Mongol conquest of the world.
 
More importantly, when advanced Chinese political ideas reached early modern Europe, where the medieval feudal aristocracy was collapsing as it had in China, the influence of these ideas on European thinkers and politicians was not mere happenstance.  It wasn’t just that they needed such ideas to mount a veiled critique of existing institutions—instead Chinese ideas spoke directly to the problems they were facing.
　　
In terms of economics, China early on established a pre-industrial market economy based on the free sale of land. Indirect taxation, excise taxes, and credit-based public finance (e.g., state-issued bonds), which have been cited as important signs of progress in the creation of the modern state, were previously thought to have been invented first by the Netherlands and the United Kingdom and to have been an important reason for the latter's leadership of the industrial revolution and the second phase of modernization. However, according to a study by William Liu刘光临, a professor of economic history at Lingnan University in Hong Kong, China established these fiscal systems as early as the Song Dynasty.  Sadly, these systems did not survive the Mongol conquest intact, and were only partially restored toward the end of the Qing dynasty under the pressure of foreign invasion.
　　
In sum, post-Warring States period traditional China differed from Mediterranean civilization in that China faced limited competition with similarly developed civilizations in geographic proximity, although traditional Chinese dynasties can be said to have competed with multiple high-level civilizations over time. Civilizational exchange in traditional China can thus be described as having occurred in time rather than in space. The hard-fought lessons and experience of traditional China also can contribute significantly to humanity’s efforts to reflect on and deepen civilization moving forward.
 
Conclusion: Encouraging Free Competition among Civilizations in a Larger World
 
Surveying the history of the development of human civilization, the first thing we should learn is to be humble, having observed that the imagination and creativity of human beings, individually and even as a group, are very limited. The indigenous peoples of the Pacific Islands, Australia, and even the Americas, who did not have bronze, horses, or wheels, experienced more than a thousand years of development without having invented these seemingly simple things. Prior to their deep involvement with Mediterranean civilization, the Chinese had never even thought about Greek democracies or Roman republics (which is not to say that traditional Chinese thought and politics were necessarily in conflict with them, could not understand them, or did not contain elements that corresponded to them).
 
From the opposing perspective, for early modern European Enlightenment thinkers, the fact that China that could maintain morality and a large state without relying on religion was an eye-opener. Knowing that human imagination and creativity are limited, we should cherish the civilizational diversity made possible by globalization, and we should not deny the significance and value of either Mediterranean or Chinese civilization.
 
Having realized the value of different civilizations and the importance of civilizational diversity, we should promote the exchange and competition between and among them. The prerequisite for exchange is the protection of diversity. We have noted that the success of Mediterranean civilization was in fact the product of the exchange of diverse civilizations. One of the most brilliant eras in traditional Chinese thought was the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, also noted for its pluralism and competition. The later development of Europe was also grounded in the competition between diverse civilizations. The protection of pluralism means that we have to oppose the suppression of creativity within a country as well as between countries, through monopolies or other devices that create walls, visible and invisible, to suppress free communication.
 
At the same time, the most effective way for civilization to improve through exchange is through pluralistic competition. Historically, war has often been a very effective, if not the most effective, source of motivation for technological and even political development and innovation at the state level. The competition during the Warring States period in China led to the development of a rational bureaucracy and meritocratic politics, the modern financial systems in Britain and the Song Dynasty developed gradually because of the need to increase military spending, and many major inventions of the 20th century, from penicillin to the atomic bomb, were the results of efforts to win a war.
 
But at the same time, we must see that war is too cruel a means, and may even disrupt and destroy the process of civilization. The Mongol Yuan's destruction of the Song dynasty is an extreme example of this in history. Given today's technological development, war can even lead to the destruction of the entire human race. Therefore, a compromise solution is to break down all kinds of repressive forces (such as monopolies and various "walls") and encourage open but competitive exchanges, while protecting human life and meeting basic human needs (including medical care and education) as much as possible.
 
This pluralism is different from the commonly understood liberal pluralism. The latter emphasizes tolerance among civilizations, but this tolerance often degenerates into indifference toward other civilizations, including a refusal to understand each other in depth, settling for the superficial or even relativistic and nihilistic notion that "we are all the same."[3] The pluralism we are talking about here is the pluralism of competition. It is a competition that avoids physical and cultural extinction, so we are not talking about a Huntingtonian clash of civilizations, but rather mindset of a true soccer lover:  he wants his team to cooperate and win, but he still wants teams that can challenge his to survive, and is even willing to help those teams survive.  The progress of human civilization requires this kind of "clash," this kind of battle of the gods.
 
Notes

[1]白彤东, “文明的边缘—对华夏文明历史地位与人类文明进程的反思,” originally published in Chinese Political Studies/中国政治学 in 2021/3, posted to the New Confucian website Rujiagang/儒家纲 on February 12, 2022, and to the Aisixiang website on August 7, 2022. 

[2]Translator’s note:  The reference here is to the extinction of native North American horses between 8,000 and 12,000 years ago, one explanation for which is the arrival of groups associated with the Clovis culture in North America.  The Clovis culture is associated with the killing of large game.

[3]Translator’s note:  Bai is quoting the remark by the famous anthropologist Fei Xiaotong, “各美其美，美人之美，美美与共，天下大同,” which might be translated as “Let everyone marvel in what is beautiful about themselves, and also marvel in what is beautiful about others, and we will realize the beauty that is shared and the commonalities that bind the world.”  My impression is that Bai is talking about the “liberalism” of classic Coke commercials:  “I’d like to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony…”