Under the premise of Sinocentrism, Chinese people held a firm faith in their own superiority and absolute confidence in their own culture, without any need to look for ideas from outside world (Zhang, 2011). When a foreign civilization entered into China, there were normally two reactions. First, for those not threating Confucian ideology, ancient China seemed to welcome the new knowledge, thoughts and skills, but ancient scholars would re-explain
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them by using Chinese traditional knowledge and thoughts. To put it in another way, Chinese intellectuals, by using the strategy of ‘the Western Learning Originated from China’ and ‘Chinese learning as essence and Western learning for its utility’, maintained Chinese traditions as well as national pride. Because China has very long and rich history, they always could find something similar as a kind of reference. Chinese learning was regarded as the ultimate basis for rationality. Knowledge from other civilizations was used at a practical level. For a long time, Western knowledge and learning was strictly used in limited fields, such as astronomy, mathematics and manufacture of artifacts.
Although Emperor Kangxi admitted the precision of Western learning, he still believed this originated from ancient China. On the one hand, this showed an open attitude towards new things; on the other hand, at the same time it upheld national esteem (Han, as cited in Ge, 2012; 316). However, some people in the Ming and Qing dynasties were open to Western knowledge and not only accepted it but wanted to learn more and even explore the values and beliefs that were so different from Chinese traditional thinking. Ge (2012) gave a possible reason that these people were convinced by the usefulness of tools and wanted to understand the system behind them. However, it was the absolute self-confidence of possessing universal truth that enabled such people to have an open attitude towards the new knowledge.
This process gradually challenged the monopoly of Chinese thought by offering alternative explanations and opened the door to introduce new knowledge into China. Opposing this were the firm defenders of tradition, Chinese intellectuals who absolutely rejected the knowledge, values and beliefs that challenged Confucian ideology because they realized that the incompatibility of the two systems would lead to a collapse of Chinese traditional thought and belief. They vetoed any Western knowledge that might threaten the wholeness of traditional thought, giving rise to radical nationalism and conservatism to maintain their own interests (ibid.).
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2.2.3.1 Social change - society tends to be open
Under the premise of Sinocentric-led tianxia, it was only when the rulers and Confucian intellectuals faced difficulties in governing the kingdom, in relation to carrying out Confucianism ethics in practice and facing the threat from Yi groups to their politically dominant and ruling position, that the situation changed. Confucian scholars started to learn about the cultures of different groups and study all aspects of knowledge in order to strengthen the defence of the kingdom. In other words, their ‘embrace’ or openness towards culturally different others was in reaction to outside threats, for the purpose of strengthening the regime and consolidating power (Jin and Liu, 2006, 2010a).
Sun (2004) firmly believed that Chinese people would never truly accept foreign culture. Only when its own cultural value system collapsed or was in danger, would Chinese people seek help from the others. However, ‘the Other’ would eventually be integrated or deployed to serve the stability of the Chinese culture system. Throughout Chinese history, the introduction into China of foreign ideas such as Indian Buddhism or Western Marxism coincided with extreme social turmoil.
Interestingly, compared to a self-critical, mainstream view of openness, one Chinese scholar has expressed a relatively romantic and unique argument. In Wang Mingming’s book The West as the Other: A Genealogy of Chinese Occidentalism, he proposed, in investigating the history of travel in China that, in Chinese culture, there existed a virtue of embracing the other. Wang added that, as a country of the East, China has to have its own ‘Occidentalism’- if this word can be used in the same way as the ‘Orientalism’ proposed by Edward Said, which contains a ‘mixture of romanticism and strategic knowledge of the exotic’ (2014: 18; 2007:13) and ‘has less to do with the Orient than it does with ‘our’ world’ (2014, 8). For the ancient Chinese, the remote West could never be a part of their world (Zhong, 2000: 1, as cited in Wang, 2014: 50). There were stories about the geographical West in ancient times, but they were nothing more than rumours. In this sense, the image of the geographical West viewed by ancient Chinese is sharply different from the real West. Through investigating
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documents such as King Mu’s Journey to the West and the Monks’ pilgrimage to ‘the West Territories’, Wang pointed out that these journeys constantly express an ideal image for the ancient Chinese that the Other in a distant land always had something that could remedy the weakness of ancient China - the self (ibid:76).
Wang described King Mu, who was not an anthropologist, as a benevolent explorer. The purpose of his journey was to find wisdom in the geographical West to make his kingdom better. During his journey to the West, whenever he met a different ethnic group, they exchanged gifts, feasted and said farewell. He always showed great politeness to those people who were culturally different from him and appreciated their wisdom and lifestyle. It seems that the difference between them was never a reason to prevent them from communicating.
Another example Wang wrote in his book is about ‘the West Territories’. This was how India was referred to during the spread of Buddhism in China. People looked on India as the House of All Sages (2014: 158). To a great extent, going on a pilgrimage for Buddhist scriptures to ancient India was driven by unrest within society, in pursuit of peaceful methods of governing society as well as how to restore order. Thus, based on this argument, Wang pointed out that, in the modern era, the desire of Chinese intellectuals to go ‘on a pilgrimage’ to the West for new concepts also reflects unrest in the home culture and an attempt to find solutions.
From the perspective of anthropology, Fei Xiaotong (1992) has shed light on social change at a micro level. In his theory, social structure is a part of culture, which is created by people to meet their needs. When the old structure no longer meets people’s needs, then they want to change society. When people meet a new situation, they normally use the old method first to solve the problem. However, old methods cannot solve new problems or only deal with them ineffectively, which inconveniences people. The old methods gradually lose the trust of people and they seek new methods to cope with new circumstances. These new methods
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are normally invented by people or learned from other cultures. Also, the new methods should be tested to see whether they can deal with the problems. There might be some person to show new methods to people and get people’s trust. Fei refers to this kind of person as a ‘cultural hero’.
According to Fei (1992), this kind of hero might have followers and accumulate power. Fei called this ‘temporal power’, which is brought about by the change. ‘A cultural hero’ often appears in a period of rapid social change or social instability. By contrast, in a relatively stable society, because the social structures meet people’s needs, there is no need for change, nor for a ‘cultural hero’. During a social transition, experience might not be sufficient as a guide to the current situation and people may rely on principles that are not necessarily invented and developed by their elders. Moreover, habits can be an obstacle to adaptation and experience mean a stubborn and outdated way of life, which may even be viewed as a threat to survival.
Above all, there are two similar points which scholars mentioned above have emphasized. First, when Chinese society initiates to embrace the Other, it seeks for something that its culture lacks or cannot meet people’s needs in a certain aspect. Second, this tends to take place in a period of social transition or in an unstable state. Bearing this in mind, it could be argued that in general, if Chinese society is in a relatively stable state and its cultural system is meeting people’s needs, the level of openness is low. However, if Chinese society is experiencing transition or is not stable and its cultural system cannot satisfy people’s needs, the society tends to become more open.