Renewal: The Chinese State and the New Global History

4. A Revolution is a New Mandate

4. A Revolution is a New Mandate When the ancient Chinese word geming (革命) was equated with the European idea of revolution, the Chinese experienced a major shift in perspective.1 Radical change no longer stemmed from the conjunction of the will of Tian (Heaven) and a new dynastic state. Transformations did not necessarily come from violent acts of war, rebellion or invasions that overthrew a failed dynasty or established a new one. They could happen peacefully in the realms of economic development, scientific and technological innovation, inspirational ideas, and bold institutional reforms that led to changes in mindsets. But because geming, in its meaning as “removing the Mandate”, was used in official dynastic histories for over 3,000 years for political legitimization, modern usage also led to ambiguities when it covered the broader aspects of revolution. In Chinese history, the idea of tianming (天命) referred to the Mandate of Heaven given to those who ruled all under Heaven (tianxia). It came from the time when the founder of the Shang dynasty destroyed the Xia. Not only was that a righteous act blessed by Heaven but also a success story that lasted for more than 400 years. When it was next applied to the Zhou founder after he displaced the Shang, it marked an even more successful tenure, one that lasted for nearly 800 years, even though the Zhou tianzi was effectively powerless and largely out of sight for the dynasty’s last four centuries. 82 | RENEWAL Geming was thereafter used to describe the successful change of a dynastic house, and it did not much matter how long the dynasty lasted or how much it achieved. Early historians used terms such as tianming (天命), tianshou (天授) and shangtian mingming (上天明命) to associate the new rulers with righteousness. Thus geming became a ritualistic, or even technical, term that described a change in the ruling house.2 When used to translate the European idea of revolution, it gained new life as a symbol of people unburdening themselves from all aspects of their past. That image was widely accepted during most of the 20th century, reflecting the hope for changes that would save Chinese civilization from oblivion. Since the 1980s, however, after Deng Xiaoping’s call for reform and opening to the outside world, revolution has become largely an historical phenomenon. No one writing the history of modern China can avoid the word, but few in China would apply it to the developments of the past thirty years. Why is that so? Geming’s association with the use of violence and the breakdown of an older order is strong, more so than is conveyed in the European idea of revolution. Using the latter, it can be argued that a great deal of what happened during the decades of economic reforms after 1978 did produce a revolution in ideas, lifestyles and economic and social structures within China. But the word geming retains a recent connection with violent change that does not describe what Deng Xiaoping and his successors want to see happen today. They have thus a good reason to avoid it and prefer the word gaige (改革), or reform . This was a significant choice because not that long ago reform was anathema for those who had dedicated their lives to revolution. From the time when geming meant both changing the Mandate and the modern idea of revolution, it could be used to characterize the actions that mobilized millions of people to rise up to remove the Qing dynasty and to determine the kind of modern state that would succeed it. The centenary of the Xinhai geming, or 1911 Revolution , that established the Republic of China was celebrated in major A Revolution is a New Mandate| 83 Chinese cities on the mainland, in Taiwan and Hong Kong, as well as among Chinese overseas. Two years earlier, the PRC also celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of its establishment in 1949. The first was a political revolution that created a different kind of state while the second marked the culmination of a social revolution wrought out of decades of civil war that completed what the first revolution had started. The republican state established in 1912 was totally new, so alien that most Chinese were not sure what their country would become. There were changes in the constitution but few understood what a constitution was supposed to do. Instead, numerous warlords and other protagonists exhausted their resources in a series of civil...