Confucianism and Human Rights (review)

Reviews 85 erous time frame ofone or two centuries. In an era ofincreasing globalization, they are left with perhaps only two choices: to become or not to become a member ofthe capitalist world system while under heavy pressure from without—and from within, in the form ofrising expectations among their own impatient citizens. This is a big challenge and presents LDC planners and policy makers with cruel choices—as Denis Goulet succinctly illustrated in a succession of studies back in the 1970s. Thus Fengshui JIUJC may not necessarilybe the perfect example ofEastern tradition, just as the computer may not be the ideal symbol of the totality ofWestern civilization. In other words, in the struggle to reach the top, what room is left for latecomer developing countries in an ever-expanding capitalist hegemonic world system? Can they afford the luxury ofholding to tradition at the cost ofmodernization, however defined? Altogether, Anywise is a book about architecture, but it is also a book about urbanization, modernization, and development, viewed particularly from the standpoint ofthe contrast between East and West. Globalization, growth, the information age, modernity, postmodernity, technology, and tradition are all touched upon. Scholars in architecture, planning, sociology, and development— and policy makers as well—should all be able to draw both theoretical and practical inspiration from this book. Hsiao-hung Nancy Chen Hsiao-hung Nancy Chen is a professor in the Department ofSociology and the Dean ofthe College ofSocial Sciences, National Chengchi University, Taipei; she specializes in studies ofdevelopment and urban sociology and planning. Wm. Theodore de Bary and Tu Weiming, editors. Confucianism and Human Rights. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. xxiii, 327 pp. Hardcover $40.00, isbn 0-231-10936-9. In their highly publicized media events in both the United States (October 1997) and China (June 1998), Presidents Jiang Zemin and Bill Clinton expressed disagreement on their respective views on human rights. Reporting on these summit y mversity meetings, the American news media further exacerbated the difference by using the Tiananmen Square mass demonstrations of Spring 1989 and the subsequent Beijing massacre on June 4 as convenient points of reference. Granted that the television image of government tanks and guns against helpless Chinese students 86 China Review International: Vol. 6, No. ?, Spring 1999 and civilians had been indelibly seared into the minds of the American viewing public in particular and the people of the world generally, China has nonetheless indeed made great strides in improving the lives of a large portion of its populace since that tragedy of almost a decade ago. Still, manifesting a kind of sleeping beauty syndrome, Dan Rather of CBS, for example, implied during the Clinton visit that until the arrival ofthe American president, China had not even considered the issue ofhuman rights. In fact, prior to the Clinton visit, Vice Premier Qian Qichen announced that China will sign the main United Nations human rights convention, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), just as it did the companion convention, the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) shortly before the arrival of President Jiang in Washington, D.C, in October 1997.1 Confucianism and Human Rights consists largely of the proceedings ofthe first across-the-Pacific conference (at the East-West Center, University of Hawai'i, August 1995) to address the Universal Declaration on Human Rights of 1948, subsequent developments, and the expansion, especially in recent decades, from its original focus on civil and political rights (1948) to economic, social, and cultural rights (mid-1970s) to the group rights of a people for survival and self-determination in a shrinking planet (1990s). At the Hawai'i conference these different generations of interdependent and mutually potentiating human rights were all carefully examined from the perspective of one of China's own cultural traditions, namely Confucianism. In addition to such organizations as the American Council of Learned Societies, the East-West Center, the Heyman Center for the Humanities, and the Human Rights Center of Columbia University, a major sponsor was the China Confucius Foundation (established in Beijing in 1984). The conference brought together a high-powered coterie of East Asian studies specialists, philosophers, historians, political scientists, and law professors—most ofwhom...