Speech : George Yeo on China pt3

How do we see China? I think to begin with, it's important not to try and, from an intellectual viewpoint, transpose our own experiences on to China, because I believe it will develop according to its own logic, according to its own DNA. It is growing now, it will continue to grow, it will develop its own contradictions and one day those contradictions, many years from now, will lead to its own decline. So they say at the beginning of a dynasty the taxes are light but the treasury is full, and at the end of a dynasty, the taxes are crushing but the treasury is empty. The important thing to realise about China is that some things are deeply resistant to change. Take Confucius. Every time they had to overturn a dynasty, they had to overturn Confucius, because Confucius justified the status quo. So throughout the 19th century, whether it was the Taiping Revolution, the Communist movement or Sun Yat Sen; they spent their lives debunking Confucius. It reached its final moment when they criticised Zhou Enlai together with Confucius- no- Lin Biao together with Confucius. That was the last paroxysm. Today, Hu Jingtao said [in Mandarin He Xie She Hui ], "harmonious society". Suddenly you hear the resonance of Confucius coming back. And everywhere in the world on the pattern of Alliance Francaise, the Goethe Institute, the USIA, they establish Confucius Institutes and the learning of the Confucianist classics are coming back with remarkable force in China, not yet in the state curriculum but just parents wanting to teach their children the Confucianist ditties. Now why is this important? From Mao to Deng to Jiang Zemin, at every stage, they re-interpreted Marx. They are comfortable with the young Marx, the idea of the superstructure on the economic base, the idea that politics is concentrated economics- that they like. But the class struggle, they downplay. They talk about the Three Represents, the progressive forces, the progressive elements, they nurture those. Now Hu Jingtao says "harmonious society", "peaceful re-emergence". This mindset has a certain attitude towards law, has a certain attitude towards religion, towards democracy and towards foreign policy and I would like to deal with each in turn.

Joseph Needham many years ago, I think in the 60's, the man who wrote The Science and Civilisation of China, that great encyclopedic work; he said its not that the Chinese have no legal tradition. In fact, by his estimation, the Chinese had a greater corpus of legal codification than the West. A greater corpus of legal codification than the West! Surprise, surprise. But the idea that the Emperor is below the law, that is completely alien to their thinking. Where did that idea come from? Well in the West, you may trace it back to Hammurabi, you may trace it back to Moses, to Greece, to Rome. But if you trace the evolution of that DNA, it goes back, way back, into its early beginnings. The Chinese had a very different evolutionary starting point. It was not in law, it was in an idea they call 'li' which is proper conduct among human beings. They believe, deep in their instincts, that law is only a means towards justice, and that when the outcome of law is perverse, then that law must be overridden, because justice, proper conduct, the proper relationship among human beings must take precedence. So from time to time when you hear about big corruption cases like the recent one involving Cheng [Liangyu], the Party Secretary of Shanghai, it is a big thing. And no doubt he will be made an example of, he'll be punished, the people around him, yes, then after that the trail ends. This will not be the New York State Prosecutor pursuing the legal case to its logical limit. They will ask themselves, now what do we want to do. This fellow has done wrong, he has to be punished and an example has to be made of him, but the larger system has to be protected. There are some who are involved indirectly, they need to be told off, maybe disciplined, but you do not want to upset the order of the universe. So their approach is a very different one, and they will produce laws in vast quantities, on contracts, bankruptcies, foreign investments, on this that and the other.

But when it comes to ultimate power, the Chinese Communist Party, the President of the Republic, the General Secretary of the Communist Party, they will never be subject to the law in mechanistic way. They are quite open about it. They say the judges, the judiciary, the State procurator, working under the leadership of the Communist Party, and they are expected to be members of the Communist Party and be imbued with its ideals and ideas. Will this change? I doubt it. Why would it not change? Because it is an idea which has served them for centuries. And to suddenly say that all that had happened in the previous dynasties, all that the earlier histories have summarised, are all wrong and that they should instead adopt something with its origins in Western Europe, which had as its crowning moment the crowning of Charlemagne by the Pope in the year 800; to them, what are you talking about? For the Chinese, laws are more like regulations, means towards a larger end. Their attitude towards democracy follows a parallel pattern.