Toward a Modern Chinese Buddhism: Taixu's Reforms

Chapter 1: Defending the Dharma in a Revolutionary Age

13 C H A P T E R 1 DEFENDING THE DHARMA IN A REVOLUTIONARY AGE I n the late nineteenth century, long before the 1911 revolution that forced the abdication of Puyi (1906–1967),the last emperor of the Qing dynasty (1644–1912), Chinese intellectuals were engaged in a reevaluation on an unprecedented scale of the very foundations of their ancient culture. The primary reasons for this intense introspection, and the sometimes polarizing, divisive debate that it occasioned, were serious dynastic decline and the growing influence in China of western civilization.1 Local revolts and regional rebellions against Manchu rule caused significant upheaval and dislocation . Many issues that contributed to the general unrest and sense of insecurity, such as official corruption, taxation policies, and governmental treatment of minority groups,were essentially unrelated to the presence of westerners in China. Other critical issues, however, were either directly or indirectly related to western influences on a society that for centuries had been minimally affected by developments elsewhere in the world. Westernization was largely a consequence of the Chinese empire’s forced political and economic concessions to foreign powers that began with the Opium War (1839–1842). China’s military defeat by Great Britain and the subsequent infusion of western personnel and ideas into the country had created a piercing awareness of a fundamental disequilibrium between civilizations that had to be addressed. 14 DEFENDING THE DHARMA Not only had China’s sovereignty been compromised, but the previously confident self-perception of the Chinese people had been seriously challenged.The precise nature of the imbalance between East and West and the identity crisis that it precipitated were differently evaluated.Yet on one resolution virtually all Chinese could agree: in view of these untoward circumstances, creative, energetic leadership was needed to reconsider the country’s past and reenvision its future in a changing global environment. The solution to China’s internal problems, many judged, was intrinsically related to an appropriate response to the new external pressures. As a result, as Joseph Levenson has suggested, two sharply contrasting responses emerged to this crisis of identity vis-à-vis the West: the abandonment of tradition by iconoclasts on the one hand, and its petrifaction by traditionalists on the other. Significantly, both these responses, the iconoclastic as well as the traditionalistic, demonstrated “a Chinese concern to establish the equivalence of China and the West.”2 For several millennia, the Chinese people had considered their country, Zhongguo (the “Middle Kingdom”), to be the center of the world. They thought of their domain not so much as one nation among others but as the sole civilized world surrounded by peoples of less developed societies. Attempts to enforce a tributary system, in which countries that desired relations with China were required to acknowledge their inferior status, reflected this ethnocentric worldview . During the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), the ceremonies associated with a unified tributary system became highly structured, and the formal procedures for establishing and maintaining relations with China were very complicated and expensive.3 By the late sixteenth century, elements of a more bilateral model for foreign relations were introduced through interchange with the Manchus and Mongols. However, western nations encountering the country’s hierarchical political ideology in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries responded to all aspects of the tributary system with considerable resentment. Prior to 1800, all but one of the leaders of the trade missions to China from western powers were forced to accede to demands to kowtow before the Qing emperor in accordance with the rituals of the system.4 Yet by the early nineteenth cen- DEFENDING THE DHARMA 15 tury, the governments and commercial agents of the western nations refused to recognize or comply fully with Chinese expectations. As Immanuel C.Y. Hsü notes: The traders wanted greater freedom of action, and theWestern governments , newly released from the Napoleonic Wars and greatly strengthened by the Industrial Revolution, would not suffer the tributary treatment . They insisted on international relations according to the law and diplomacy of Europe; but the Chinese would not sacrifice their cherished system. In effect, they said, “We have not asked you to come; if you come you must accept our ways,” to which the West’s reply was “You cannot stop us from coming and we will come on our own terms.”5 The English defeat of the Chinese in the OpiumWar dramatized and reinforced that sharp reply. Furthermore, it opened China...