Tag: conservatism

The Conservative Character of the Taiping Rebellion

A surface level study of the ideology of the Taiping Rebellion may lead one to view the movement as distinctly unique and unprecedented in Chinese history. Though Christianity, a religion obviously not indigenous to China, had made itself known to China for centuries prior to the rebellion, it certainly never inspired social movements anywhere near the scale of the Taiping. A first impression of the Taiping rebellion as revolutionary and progressive may be reinforced by historiographical schools of thought that see the Taiping’s as peasant rebels and revolutionary ancestors of the Communists.[1] Whilst land redistribution was a theme in the rhetoric of the Taiping’s it was never realized in practice. Additionally, whilst foot-binding was abolished in areas controlled by the Taiping rebels, the practice was far less common in Guangdong and Guangxi province where the revolt effectively was born, therefore, for the leaders of the rebellion abolition of foot-binding was a less revolutionary step than it would have been in other parts of China.[2]

The political and theological orientation of the Taiping’s was conservative in nature, rhetoric and ideology concerned a return to a time when China was favoured by God (Tianzhu). The connection between God and the Chinese people was severed at the time of Qin Shi Huang’s wars of unification when Qin adopted the title of (Di), usurping a title that can only legitimately be held by God, and began worshipping Daoist false Gods.[3] Since then, China had become increasingly morally corrupt not least due to the idolatry associated with foreign Buddhism. It is of course, a classic conservative rhetorical move to harken back to a Golden Age when people had pure morals and society existed in perfect order. The widespread iconoclastic attacks on Buddhist and Daoist idols bare superficial resemblance in imagery to the iconoclastic attacks perpetrated by the Communist Party against antiquated superstition. However, the purpose of the iconoclastic attacks conducted by the Taiping’s was not to destroy old ways to make way for a new, progressive society, but to reverse the spiritual decline that China had suffered due to the worship of false Gods.[4]

Perhaps the most striking example of the Taiping’s conservatism was their distinctly patriarchal view of the role of women in society. In Poems of the Heavenly Father, Hong Xiuquan, leader of the Taiping rebellion, outlines his misogynistic feminine ideal. The poems lay out ten offences which are punishable by beating, clearly establishing a link with the Decalogue so that women serving Hong in the palace would associate the ten offences with the will of heaven. The ten offences are:

 

          1. Disrespectfulness
          2. Refusing to obey instructions
          3. Raising the eyes
          4. Disrespectfulness in asking for instructions
          5. Rashness
          6. Speaking to loudly
          7. Refusing to respond
          8. Cheerlessness
          9. Casting the eyes to the left or right
          10. Unmannerly speech[5]

 

In the palace of Heavenly Capital (Tianjing) feminine virtue was an instrument of patriarchal domination. Hong’s patriarchal doctrines where not always Biblically inspired, but in the case of the ‘three obedience’s’ inspired by the Chinese classics. The three obedience’s instructed women to obey their fathers, then their husbands, then (as widows) their sons.[6] In his monograph on Taiping ideology, Carl S Kilcourse argues that the patriarchal nature of the Taiping movement was the clearest example of Hong’s attachment to classical Confucian morality, even though the movement’s outward rhetoric disavowed Confucianism.[7] Poems of the Heavenly Father demonstrate Hong’s reluctance to move away, even nominally, from the oppressive patriarchal role of women that was the norm in China, and is perhaps the most illustrative feature of the Taiping movement’s conservative character.

[1] Kilcourse, Carl S. Taiping Theology: The Localization of Christianity in China, 1843–64. Springer, 2016. p.157

[2] Ibid. p.158

[3] Ibid. p.51

[4] Ibid. p.54

[5] Ibid. p.161-162

[6] Ibid. p.164

[7] Ibid. p.165

Ogyu Sorai and the Recurring Motif of the Debasement of the Ruling Class

Ogyu Sorai (1666-1728) was a Japanese Confucian scholar influential in the Tokugawa period. His most influential work, Discourses on Government (Seidan), laid out a vision for reform of the government along Confucian principles. Sorai’s impetus for writing Discourses on Government was a growing sense of Japan’s moral degradation. According to Sorai, the natural hierarchy of Japanese society was being flipped on its head with the merchant class getting richer than the Samurai and Daimyo.[1]  Sorai observed that the Daimyo had become moral debased, corrupted by luxury and decadence. The Daimyo had become sedentary in Edo and started to expect the state to pay for their decadent lifestyles. Sorai observed that this occurred because there were not institutions (seido) regarding clothes, housing and food, so there was no established way to suppress luxury.[2] The situation was doubly tragic according to Sorai since the lifestyle of the Daimyo became a financial burden for the Shogunate and, by becoming accustomed to luxury, the morally debased Daimyo were not less efficient rulers of their territories. In fact, Sorai recommended that people from the lower classes, who had endured many hardships should regularly be rotated into bureaucratic roles. He wrote “Why is that during a period of prolonged peace, men of ability are found only in the lower classes, while men of the upper class grow increasingly stupid? As far as I can see, men’s abilities are developed only through hardship and tribulation.”[3]  In my opinion there is a clear aspect to which Sorai’s language is gendered. With the trend of Daimyo marrying women from the Kyoto court nobility, they had adopted feminine luxury, and had become emasculated by the now more economically successful merchants. I’ve noticed that there is a recurring motif not just in the history of the Sino sphere, but world history, that of the upper/ruling class becoming gradually, over generations, accustomed to foreign luxuries, becoming morally/sexually debased as a result, and then the state, which was founded on according to high moral principles, inevitably collapses. This motif most strikingly appears in explanations for the collapse of the Roman Empire, which was founded on such pure virtues like the rule of law and equality between citizens. Once the empire stopped expanding, military and political rules became sedentary accustomed to Persian luxury goods and lost their civic and military virtue. In Chinese dynastic history a recurring motif is that of the early rulers of a dynasty winning the mandate of heaven due to their pure morals and sagely ways. However, over generations, the emperors become sedentary, become sexually deviant, and lose the mandate of heaven because of their lax morals. Until modern Western enlightenment political theory, I believe it was taken for granted by most that the state was at its core a moral entity, and the health of the state was a matter of adhering to rule that was morally virtuous (however defined). I believe Sorai wrote the Discourses on Government with a sense of urgency for this reason, that he did not want to he the Tokugawa Shogunate descend into unrecoverable moral chaos and collapse.

[1] Lidin O.G. (2014) Ogyū Sorai: Confucian Conservative Reformer: From Journey to Kai to Discourse on Government. In: Huang C., Tucker J. (eds) Dao Companion to Japanese Confucian Philosophy. Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht p.178

[2] Ibid. p.175

[3] Tiedemann, Arthur. Sources of Japanese Tradition : 1600 to 2000, edited by Wm. Theodore De Bary, et al., Columbia University Press, 2005. p.236