Seoul, Korea
Roads to Progress and Tradition
The habit of thinking in terms of dichotomies of East and West, or Oriental and Occidental, often equates tradition with Asia and progress with Europe. I would like to explore this in the context of research strategies for future Asian and European Studies.The following propositions, juxtaposing the words progress and tradition, are offered as a way to approach the subject: 'Progress means rejection of tradition', 'Progress depends on the best use of tradition', and 'New tradition embraces continuing progress'
By Wang Gungwu
The two words progress and tradition are unfashionable and carry a lot of baggage, both philosophical and historical. I shall not try to trace their ramifications here, but limit their meanings to the most powerful images that the two words can conjure up this century in the minds of educated Asians. In general terms, tradition refers mainly to the elite features of The Great Traditions in various parts of Asia, while progress refers to what most Asians consider the major material achievements of the West. These images varied from time to time, but their links with each other are covered by the three propositions mentioned above, For a long time, many leaders in Asia saw this progress as a threat to their traditions, but most of them also recognized that progress was what their countries needed.The modernizers among the Asian leaders have, since the 19th century, been reading the history and politics of the more successful European countries in search of answers about the nature of their country's wealth and power. They were impressed by European ships and weaponry, and by professional skills in finance, medicine, and law. Eventually, they came to appreciate the ideas behind modern progress and the persistent search for ever more progress.
The Renaissance ideal was the most striking. The idea that intellectual leaders could criticize tradition by referring to an earlier tradition was of particular interest. Even more so was the fact that radically new ideals could be established without discarding the essentials of their tradition. During the Reformation, the role that religion played was also revolutionary. Even with the Counter Reformation, tradition was defended by accepting ideas which were ultimately progressive.
Many came to admire the so-called 'Enlightenment Project' and the secularization of humanistic principles. In particular, the most curious and innovative minds observed the search for universal laws of society, including the rights of man, and were prepared to ask similar questions of their own traditions, Those who read more widely followed the debate between the Ancients and the Moderns, and the development of the Idea of Progress itself.
More recently, Asian intellectuals have noted the path that Europe, and its extensions to North America and Australasia, has taken towards a caring, humanitarian, and welfare-conscious society. In many cases, they are aware that these steps had been inspired by reformed versions of basic Christian tenets that formed the core of deep-rooted European tradition. Thus tradition is preserved and possibly even strengthened by the strong advocates of progress.
Of course, they are also bemused by two uncontrollable developments. On the one hand are the extremes of modernity as represented by individualism and the atomization of the family and of society itself. On the other, there is the terrifying power of economic and technological globalization. What is bewildering is the speed at which new inventions have placed the whole world at the mercy of the handful of people who have charge of the levers of financial power.
In the face of such changes, there have been Asian leaders who believe that progress requires the rejection of tradition. The European powers who defeated them regularly had brought the products of modern science to improve communications within and between countries. At its worst, this made many countries in Asia poorer. At their best, modern science, technology, and institutions provided better health and education for the conquered, and gave a higher moral purpose to the conquerors to set good examples for their subjects.
In varying degrees, this was the most challenging idea of progress to threaten the fortresses of tradition, notably in China which had long enjoyed the status of having been a powerful empire in its own right. The high moral purpose questioned the superiority of China's own cultural and political traditions. This was a new experience for both China and Japan, unlike that for the Islamic world. The Muslims had fought Christian-inspired claims for a thousand years. They had known the mediaeval Christian mind at its least progressive. They had seen the advent of European material advancement, the advocacy of progress, at every stage and were better prepared to deal with the secular transformations that embodied Christian values than either the Chinese or the Japanese. As for South and Southeast Asia, Hindu-Buddhist practices had been followed by Islamic conversions before the arrival of the Europeans. Southeast Asians were, on the whole, exposed to European values earlier than the Chinese and Japanese.
But the sustained and purposeful offering of a higher moral purpose ensured ultimate victory for the Europeans. The victory came from their claim to a higher standard of humanity proven by the victories in war and business, wealth and power. These forces were easy to understand. When the Japanese saw the defeat of the superior Chinese, they saw the need to emulate the progress that the Europeans had brought. Thus the first to accept the idea that progress needed the rejection of tradition were the Japanese. Fukuzawa Yukichi wrote brilliantly about the need to do this, but the tradition they rejected was the Chinese one that they had respected for fifteen hundred years.
The success of Japan was such a contrast to the failure of China that the Chinese came to accept the extreme view that progress required the rejection of tradition. This came in a flood of writings, a flash of delayed enlightenment, all the fiercer because it had been delayed. When the idea of progress was linked to that of Social Darwinism, it really captured the Chinese imagination and produced something that was almost explosive.
Similar responses may be found in Vietnam and Korea, but they produced variations which differed enormously from that of China. This was largely because they were colonies, one of France and the other of Japan, and that experience modified their reactions somewhat. For example, in both countries were people who rejected the Confucian tradition by turning not to faith in progress but to the Christianity brought by the West. The Koreans were loath to replace Chinese influence with Japanese ways, and many Vietnamese preferred Catholicism to secular culture.
The strongest force that rejected tradition in order to make progress came out of the May Fourth Movement in China during the 1920s. It ultimately produced romantic revolutionaries like Mao Zedong, against whom the alternative moderate responses to progress did not get much of a chance. Neither the nationalism of Sun Yat-sen, nor the liberal ideals of the returned students from Europe and America who measured progress in terms of freedom and civil rights, could overcome the enthusiasm of rejection. Once the floodgates were opened to let in the most radical programmes available in Europe at the time, there was a kind of Gresham's Law in operation, in which the most radical inevitably drove out the most moderate. China during most of the 20th century, until the economic reforms of Deng Xiaoping, is a good example of how far one could go if intellectual leaders believe that progress required the rejection of tradition.
The longer view of European history suggests that their experience could more readily be interpreted to mean that progress depended on the best use of tradition. This proposition stresses that the relationship between tradition and progress is one of sequence and not one of conflict. Progress occurs when tradition is being improved with change. The best kind of progress is when each change takes place in an orderly way that enhances tradition, and each stage of change follows seamlessly from the previous one. Japan's Meiji restoration turned towards the new European model while returning to Japanese roots at the same time. Its success provided the example for the rest of Eastern Asia. Even the nationalism that emerged in the region drew strongly from that success.
There were, of course, other sources of inspiration. Jose Rizal in the Philippines was profoundly influenced by his direct experience of radical change in post- 1848 Europe. In the Malay world, the writings of Abdullah Munshi were critical of the failings in his society, but the weaknesses he identified were in the rulers and their courts, that is, in people rather than in tradition. If the people opened their eyes to the progress represented by the British and the Dutch, he thought Malay tradition could have been greatly strengthened. Across the Java Sea, Raden Ajeng Kartini spoke for those of the bupati class who highlighted the need for progress through learning from others, The assumption was that tradition would improve with modification, This approach remained dominant down to modern leaders like Soekarno, Mohammed Hatta, and Sutan Sjahrir, whose anticolonial nationalism was moderate and whose demands for progress were still drawn from concerns for history and tradition.
Similarly with Kings Mongkut and Chulalongkorn in Thailand, and this can be seen in the writings and reform calls of Prince Damrong. Even the more strident language and colourful displays of nationalist sentiment of King Wachirawut early this centry did not depart from the intimate connection between religious and political heritage and modern progress. And that tradition has persisted to the present despite many calls for more radical change, and even revolutionary action.
China was different, For many Chinese, the idea of progress was best found in scientific socialism. After Marx and Engels, the Leninist interpretations offered new life to the idea that progress could be achieved through total revolution. The effect was devastating. Mao Zedong had come to believe that this kind of progress could be advanced by merging Marxist-Leninist doctrines with aspects of Chinese tradition. He thus moved from seeking progress through rejecting tradition, to claiming that progress was attained by revolutionizing select parts of China's own traditions. In short, he thought he could 'scientifically' select the parts of tradition that would promote the progress he wanted. Instead, he revived some of the worst aspects of the tradition of arbitrary power associated with despotic emperors, and thus perverted the progress his country needed.
My third proposition, of new tradition embracing continuing progress, takes me back to an essay that I had written about the uniqueness of Europe some thirty years ago. I wrote, 'Europe will be denying its own spirit if it merely looked back to its traditions'. I believed that Europe had reached a point when it had forged a tradition of progress, that is, one which embraced continuing progress as a core part of a new tradition.
My optimism led me to believe that progress as conceived of originally by Europeans is not incompatible with traditions in Asia. The classic formulation was to say that we should pick the best (often meaning the most progressive) from the West and marry them to the best in the East (thus preserving and strengthening Asian traditions). This occurs in every Asian language, although the emphasis may be different from one language to another.
After centuries of both confrontation and convergence between Europe and Asia, we may now wonder if the classic formulation is really possible. In the end, as we are discovering, there are common standards for humanity and it is possible for us to devise common criteria for advanced civilization. There are those who despair of this, not least in the West, who are resigned to having a number of strong civilizations in the world that will have to fight one another. There are many Asian leaders and intellectuals who find this idea of the 'clash of civilization's appealing, precisely because Asian experiences over the past century confirm how impossible it is for progress to be achieved without destroying, or at least distorting, tradition. They would therefore favour the position that progress be measured by the successful rejuvenation of original traditions. If what is progressive elsewhere did not lead to that rejuvenation, then it is not progress for them and should not be accepted. In that context, the outcome would be one in which several Asian civilizations would have been strengthened, and some of them may be strong enough to resist 'European' civilization as a matter of pride and cultural self-interest.
It would be easy to mock this as backward-looking and I resist the temptation to do so. Instead, I suggest that we study the European experience afresh and use the hypothesis that Europe has been progressive over a long period of time (albeit by fits and starts) and that it has produced a new tradition which incorporates a self-correcting mechanism for ensuring continuous progress. I would not go so far as to say that this was intrinsic to the ancient roots of European civilization but suggest that this self-correcting mechanism has become a necessary condition for future progress in Europe.
The new tradition is worth close examination. Gatherings like this might be the place to start, provided we broaden the question considerably, and look beyond the obviously progressive features of science and technology, to matters of cultural traditions (notably literature and the fine arts), to philosophy and religion, to history, even to the heroic efforts to make the social sciences truly scientific. We should do this without the baggage of trying to determine what are Western and progressive values and what are Asian and regressive values.
The role of tradition in various Asian countries has been obscured by political agendas. There is now a great need for systematic comparative research. We need to know if tradition in Asia has contributed to progress in the various countries as European traditions have done for theirs. If we have shared that experience as we have shared in so many others, then Asia and Europe will have another rich dimension of commonality to build our futures on.
Professor Wang Gungwu is the director of the East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore, a distinguished senior fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore; and emeritus professor of the Australian National University. He can be reached at e-mail: eaiwgw@nus.edu.sg.