Sinologism

by Ming Dong Gu

Why, for centuries, have the West and the world continuously produced China knowledge that deviates from Chinese realities? Why, since the mid-nineteenth century, have Chinese intellectuals oscillated between commendation and condemnation of their own culture, and between fetishization and demonization of all things Western? And why have some of the world’s wisest thinkers expressed opinions on Chinese culture, which are simply wrong? In order to answer these questions, this book explores the process of knowledge production about China and the Chinese civilization and in turn, provides a critique of the ways in which this knowledge is formed. Ming Dong Gu argues that the misperceptions and misinterpretations surrounding China and the Chinese civilisation do not simply come from misinformation, biases, prejudices, or political interference, but follow certain taken-for-granted principles that have evolved into a cultural unconscious. Indeed, Gu argues that the conflicting accounts in China-West studies are the inevitable outcome of this cultural unconscious which constitutes the inner logic of a comprehensive knowledge system which he terms ‘Sinologism’. This book explores Sinologism’s origin, development, characteristics, and inner logic, and critiques its manifestations in the writings of Chinese, Western, and non-Western thinkers and scholars, including Montesquieu, Herder, Hegel, Marx, Weber, Russell, Pound, Wang Guowei, Guo Moruo, Gu Jiegang, Wen Yiduo, and many others in diverse disciplines from arts and humanities to social sciences. In doing so, Gu demonstrates why the existing critical models are inadequate for Chinese materials and makes an attempt to construct an alternative theory to Orientalism and postcolonialism for China-West studies and cross-cultural studies. Sinologism crosses over the subjects of history, thought, literature, language, art, archaeology, religion, aesthetics and cultural theory, and will appeal to students and scholars of East-West studies with a particular focus on China, as well as those interested in cultural theory more broadly.

Genres: China, Nonfiction

296 pages, Paperback

First published October 5, 2012

Reviews

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why does the West so often get China so wrong? How is it that a lot of these myths have become internalized by Chinese scholars who accept them despite being bogus? These are the two questions that drive Gu Mingdong's terrific Sinologism.

Sinologism is essentially the ideology of Sinology, which is the study of China; it is a set of methods and assumptions that have long been at the core of the discipline, resulting in the production of flawed knowledge about China. It is similar to Orientalism, but Gu rejects the idea of subsuming it under that framework due to a few key differences which he enumerates within the text; perhaps most important is the role played by the Chinese as a non-colonized people in contributing to the development of Sinologism.

Western universalism is a major issue, of course. Especially when dealing with a linguistic environment so utterly unlike anything the West is used to. Chinese writing has been used across East Asia, adapted by the Koreans, Japanese, Vietnamese, and others. Within China itself, there are countless spoken languages or dialects, yet they all use generally the same characters (there are the odd ones used, say, in Cantonese but not Mandarin, but it's rare). Chinese characters can be a medium of communication across languages since their meanings are not necessarily tied to their sound values.

And yet the Western "universal" theory is that all writing systems, even Chinese, are phonographic - they represent sound. This belief has been maintained in some rather emotional diatribes by scholars for over a century, people who viciously condemn anybody who questions it (one scholar called people who reject the phonographic nature of Chinese writing "creationists," to name just one emotionally charged characterization). Of course, few of these Western scholars have ever even acknowledged the thoughts of the Chinese themselves in this debate.

I wish that Gu had included some discussion about Western efforts to thrust an alphabetic system on China. Such outright imperialistic thinking, unfortunately, hasn't died and continues to be held by such ardent neo-colonialists as Victor Mair. Such an effort would require the sacrifice of the unity that Chinese writing imparts, since any replacement with an actual phonographic system would result in all the dialects becoming mutually unintelligible in both speech and writing, which might just be what it takes to destroy Chinese unity.

This is not a standard type of book for me. There are few things I like reading less than works of theory. I need substance, facts, names, dates, inventions, battles, reigns. None of that appears herein. But given the inordinate amount of time I spend on Chinese, and the almost daily frequency of my encounters with nonsense in the Western media and social media about China by people who know nothing whatsoever about China or Chinese, I just had to read this book the minute I learned about it.

But, alas, Gu Mingdong is too respectful to name names in most cases, leaving many of the juicier anecdotes anonymous, so this is not a brutal roasting of thoughtless pseudo-scholars and ignorant journalists who know nothing about China or Chinese but still think they are qualified to inform the world about what goes on there. An anecdote will help you understand what I was expecting.

Around the time I began this book, I was browsing through The Routledge Handbook of Sexuality Studies in East Asia. It included a chapter on prostitution in China, opening up with a description of an article in a major newspaper about the rise of prostitution there. The journalist who wrote that article claimed, apparently on faith, that there is no discussion of prostitution within China itself, despite the statistics showing it's becoming more and more common for people to engage in the sex trade to make ends meet. As the author of the chapter made clear, that couldn't have been further from the truth. A brief search would have revealed that there is open discussion on the pros and cons of prostitution and its legalization and even public protests for sex workers' rights! So why is it that the journalist assumed otherwise?

Presumably, the heuristic "China = totalitarian = total censorship" obviated the need, in the journalist's mind at least, to do any research. Of course there's no discussion of prostitution in China! China's a totalitarian state with extreme censorship. There's no discussion in China, period! This, in my experience, is how a significant percentage of news articles are written. There are concrete assumptions about what China is and does that dictate coverage; collect a few stray facts, put them through the formula, and voila! Guaranteed anti-China stories.

Another brief example: A German think tank announced that China was outsourcing production of rice to Mozambique. Why? Because China financed all these rice farms in Mozambique and Africans don't eat rice, so obviously it's all going to China. A simple Google search would have revealed that rice is a staple crop in Mozambique! But none of the journalists who repeated the think tank's claims bothered to do that check. Honestly, this is what passes for journalism about China. I see it every day, everywhere from the New York Times (a severe offender) to Breitbart (which I only rarely look at to find articles to debunk when I'm in a disputatious mood).

The rant about my personal experiences with nonsense China journalism aside, if this is what you're expecting from Sinologism, you'll be mistaken, but hopefully not disappointed. Though he doesn't touch on journalism, the role played by scholars in spreading myths and erroneous assumptions about China is no less real, even if far fewer people will be directly exposed to them. In the long run, by poisoning the well of academic knowledge, they may have even more deleterious effects on our ability to develop reliable information about China, but I think that the journalists hold far more blame for being so lazy in their work, poisoning most of society with conspiracy theories like "debt trap diplomacy" no matter how many times scholars like Deborah Bräutigam of Johns Hopkins debunk them, and thereby creating a fount of hostility that is justifying ever more militarism and racial hatred in our society.

But it's not all anti-China myths that Gu goes after. Bertrand Russell was staunchly in favor of China and insanely blind to the negatives about the Chinese, even claiming, apparently, that the Chinese are so averse to violence that their battles are mostly bloodless! I can't imagine how he became so ignorant given that he grew up at a time when photos of lingchi (slow slicing) appeared on postcards and not long after the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom massacred cities for not submitting to them.

This isn't a book a book for everyone. If you have no exposure to China studies nor any interest in agnatology (the study of ignorance, a concept I don't recall him touching on but which I think has a place in relation to this book), then you might not get much out of it. But for the minority of us who are deeply immersed in the amazing world of sinology, this is a must read.