Realms of Freedom in Modern China (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Realms of Freedom in Modern China Merle Goldman (bio) William C. Kirby , editor. Realms of Freedom in Modern China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004. 396 pp. Hardcover $60.00, ISBN 0-8047-4878. William Kirby, the editor of Realms of Freedom in Modern China, explains in the Introduction to this fifteenth volume in the series "The Making of Modern Freedom" that realms of freedom are not unique to Western civilization. They also existed in Chinese civilization but without the protections of law established in the West. He points out that these realms were particularly prevalent in the areas of personal and community autonomy. Although during the Republican era in the early decades of the twentieth century, laws were partly codified to protect such areas, the increasing level of state control established under the Goumindang (1928-1945), culminating in the 1949 Chinese Communist revolution and the rule of Mao Zedong (1949-1976), resulted in a reign of despotism that closed down these areas of freedom. Yet, after Mao's death in 1976, China reverted to the pre 1949 realms of moral autonomy, political protest, economic opportunity, and relative religious freedom that had existed off and on through most of China's history. This edited volume presents a rich, substantive discussion of these realms [End Page 400] of freedom in pre-1949 and post-Mao China and Taiwan from a variety of perspectives and with a diversity of views. The volume begins with an essay by Irene Bloom emphasizing that classical Confucian thought recognized the universal dignity of human beings, the morally autonomous individual, and legitimate protest. She points out that while "doctrines of political freedom did not originally grow on Chinese soil, there was a non-doctrinal but discernible sense of philosophical freedom . . . intertwined with an identifiably Chinese sense of a free personality" (p. 20). Moreover, the Chinese concept of the Mandate of Heaven held rulers responsible for the well-being of the people and provided justification for rebellion if rulers did not fulfill their responsibilities to the people. William Jones further explains in his essay that while China did not have any institutions that resembled Western parliaments, there were ways in which individuals, specifically the elites, were able to make their opinions known to the rulers. Moreover, there was the Confucian tradition of moral dissent, in which the individual criticized the ruler for not living up to the highest standards of Confucianism and spoke out in order to prevent corruption, instability, and ultimately the collapse of the regime. While Wen-hsin Yeh similarly cites the Confucian practice of loyal ministers, who spoke the truth to power, she cautions that "Such loyalist opposition critiqued policies and individuals, but rarely questioned the underlying assumptions of governance" (p. 166). Although dissent in imperial China came in many forms—Daoist renunciation of power and peasant rebellions as well as Confucian acts of moral protest—they were criticisms of the failings of individuals in positions of power and rarely aimed at the system itself. But with the development of an urban culture and press in the early decades of the twentieth century and the educated members of society gaining financial autonomy from the state, Yeh stresses that civic associations proliferated and dissenting intellectuals repeatedly mounted ideological challenges against the regime. Madeleine Zelin focuses on areas of freedom in the economic realm. Although China during the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) was an autocracy, she points out that it developed a free economy in which individuals had freedom to "transact" business to a degree greater than most European states until the nineteenth century. Even without a formal commercial code, there existed a relatively free market, the protection of property rights, and de facto sanctity of contracts. Furthermore, several of the institutions that economists believe to be necessary for modernity in the West were found in late imperial China, such as considerable geographic mobility, state recognition of the self-governing authority of merchant organizations, and avenues of access to the bureaucracy. Thus, contrary to the conventional view, Zelin asserts that the Qing state did not hinder the entrepreneurial impulses of the Chinese people. Another contributor, Jerome Bourgon, presents a different view of the Qing in...