The Image of China in Western Social and Political Thought (review)

David Martin Jones has assembled a remarkable review of over five hundred books written by Westerners about China or with reference to Chinese philosophy, from the seventeenth century to the present day. It goes all the way from Matteo Ricci to Jonathan Spence, touching pretty much everybody who has addressed China in between. The book consists of five main sections of roughly equal length arranged chronologically: (1) early modern European writings on East Asia, (2) early nineteenth-century writings on China, (3) nineteenth-century theories of race and civilizations and the understanding of China, (4) sinology and social scientific writings from 1890 to 1949, and (5) contemporary social and political science on China. The selection of works addressed is both intelligent and comprehensive.

This book seeks to present an alternative to Edward Said's influential work. Jones asserts that Said and the others who have been convinced by the argument presented in Said's 1978 work Orientalism are too readily dismissive of the canon of Western writings on China. In Jones' view there are a number of Western writings on China themes that, in the intellectual context of their times, made a significant contribution to the advancement of human knowledge. By sheer mass of presentation of book after book Jones makes a convincing case. As the author puts it:

Significantly, much postcolonial theorizing concerning western 'othering' of Asia assumes that the stereotypes promulgated by China phobic journalists like Gilbert or popular novelists like Sax Rohmer in The Mystery of Dr Fu-Manchu (1936) merely represented in a concentrated form an understanding that permeated more sophisticated works of historical and social analysis. Yet, a cursory familiarity with the work of Needham or Toynbee, Granet or Fairbank, Russell or Richards reveals a relativist approach to cultural difference that undermines the claim that the practice of early twentieth-century social and political science was isomorphic with popular racist discourse.

(p. 141)

There are many disparaging references to "postcolonial discourse" sprinkled throughout the text, but the challenge to Said that Jones attempts lacks intellectual vigor. Said has an analytic framework that is both intriguing and appealing. I judge that Jones could have mounted an effective challenge to this given a more disciplined approach, but his text moves too quickly through much of the entire intellectual history of the West with too few stops to explain the meaning of this exercise. Said in effect wins by default.

Moreover, unlike Said, Jones' observations about the huge number of texts are erudite but not unexpected. One keeps wanting him to tell us something we don't already know. For most of the readers of China Review International, Jones is traveling over well-trodden ground. We have read about this material in the standard secondary sources on China's intellectual history. Part of the problem is that with a text of only 203 pages and over five hundred books referenced, many weighty tomes of sinology are characterized and dismissed in a couple of phrases. The text thus takes on something of the nature of a very good annotated bibliography. It is not an intellectually mature work but more of the nature of a massive literature review. One expects this will be followed by a text to make sense of it all, but all one is left with is a page and a half at the end subtitled "Towards a Conclusion," which forms a promising start but ends far too quickly. This book thus gives the impression of being put out prematurely. Frankly, for such an ambitious undertaking comprising such a massive volume of literature, about another three hundred pages of commentary would not seem out of the way. There is no question that David Martin Jones is a scholar of impressive potential. This work simply lacks intellectual rigor and discipline.

Jones makes little or no reference to the existing literature on China in Western thought. He evidently does not...