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China's Past in the Study of China Today—Some Comments on the Recent Work of Richard A. Solomon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

F. W. Mote
F. W. Mote
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Abstract

Richard Solomon's book Mao's Revolution and the Chinese Political Culture is a pioneering effort to interpret the Chinese Communist revolution and its revolutionary social policy by using the emergent methodology of “political culture.” Although it poses several valuable questions, the author's command of the traditional Chinese civilization is inadequate to inform his judgment. Information about literacy in traditional China is mis-used, and the extent and content of education is misunderstood. Various cultural features, e.g. the Chinese counterpart to the West's Oedipal myth, are introduced but their import is erroneously explained. Family values are mistakenly interpreted in relation to the Confucian Great Tradition. The inadequacy of Solomon's handling of such cultural information casts doubts on the validity of the entire book.

Type
Review Articles
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , November 1972 , pp. 107 - 120
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1972

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References

1 Almond, and Powell, , Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach, p. 50.Google Scholar

2 Pye, Lucian, “Political Culture”, in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, vol. XII, p. 218.Google Scholar

3 From The Chinese Gentry: Studies on Their Role in Nineteenth-century Chinese Society, 1955.Google Scholar

4 Especially Chapter V, “Factors Affecting Social Mobility” in The Ladder of Success in Imperial China.

5 Ho, P. T., op. cit., p. 210Google Scholar, citing Hungmou, Ch'en, Ch'üan Tien yi-hsüeh hui-chi, 1738.Google Scholar

6 Ho, P. T., Studies on the Population of China, 1368–1953, 1959, P. 283.Google Scholar

7 “An Analysis of Chinese Clan Rules: Confucian Theories in Action,” reprinted in A. F. Wright, ed., Confucianism and Chinese Civilization, p. 47.Google Scholar

8 Mencius, VI/b/4/4, in Legge's translation.

9 Freedman, Maurice, “The Family in China. Past and Present,” in A. Feuerwerker, ed., Modern China, 1964, pp. 27–40Google Scholar. Solomon appears not to have made significant use of much important scholarship on the family in Chinese society.

10 W. T. Chan has pointed this out; see his Source Book, in Chinese Philosophy, p. 95Google Scholar. Solomon apparently eschews using the works of such modern specialists on the Chinese intellectual tradition.

11 That, of course, is not to raise the question of whether the doctrines of the revolution or its political measures are harmonious with tradition, and, in some way, derived from it.

12 “Political Culture”, in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Volume XII, pp. 218–19.Google Scholar

13 We might well refer to it as “The Roots of Madness” syndrome.