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Utopian Goals and Ascetic Values in Chinese Communist Ideology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Maurice Meisner
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Extract

The ethical values and norms which are to guide social behavior in Communist China are often conveyed through fables and stories. It thus might not be inappropriate to begin a discussion of these values with a story that is now perhaps as familiar to students of contemporary Chinese affairs as it is to the Chinese. The story is from traditional Chinese folklore, but it became a part of the Chinese Communist tradition when it was retold by Mao Tse-tung in his concluding speech to the Seventh National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in June of 1945:

“In ancient China there was a fable. ‘How Yu Kung Removed the Mountains.’ It is the story of an old man in North China in ancient times, by the name of Yu Kung of the North Mountain. His house faced south and its doorway was obstructed by two big mountains, Taihang and Wangwu. With great determination, he led his sons to dig up the mountains with pickaxes. Another old man, Chih Sho witnessed their attempts and laughed, saying: ‘What fools you are to attempt this! To dig up two huge mountains is utterly beyond your capacity.’ Yu Kung replied: ‘When I die, there are my sons; when they die there will be their own sons, and so on to infinity. As to these two mountains, high as they are, they cannot become higher but, on the contrary, with every bit dug away, they will become lower and lower. Why can't we dig them away?’ Mr. Yu Kung refuted Mr. Chih Sho's erroneous view and went on digging at the mountains day after day without interruption. God's heart was touched by such perseverance and he sent two celestial beings down to earth to carry away the mountains on their backs.”

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Articles
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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , November 1968 , pp. 101 - 110
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1968

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References

1 “How Yu Kung Removed the Mountains,” The Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung (London, 1956), Volume IV, 316–17.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., p. 317.

3 The other of the “three constantly read articles” are “Serve the People,” (a speech delivered in 1944) and “In Memory of Norman Bethune” (an essay written in 1939). On the “canonization” of the three articles see Peking Review (January 6, 1967), pp. 7–8.

4 “In Memory of Norman Bethune.” Peking Review (February 17, 1967), p. 5.

5 For an excellent recent analysis of the Calvinist world view, see Walzer, Michael, The Revolution of the Saints (Cambridge, Mass., 1965)Google Scholar; Also, Weber, mMax, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York, 1958), pp. 98–128.Google Scholar

6 Kuang-ming jih-pao, Sept. 26, 1960.

7 See, for example, Hsi-liang, Yün, “Physical Labor and Mental Labor in Socialist Society,” Ching-chi yen-chiu (Economic Research), 1965, No. 11, SCMM, No. 507, p. 9.Google Scholar

8 Hsü Li-chun, “Tsung shih-fou i-ching tao-le kung-chan chu-i' shuo-ch ʻi” (Is It Correct to Speak of “Having Already Reached Communism?”), Hung-chʻi, 1958, No. 12, pp. 20–24.

9 Chao Feng-chʻi and Wu Shih-k'ang, “Pu-tuan-ko-ming-lun ho ko-ming fa-chan-chieh-tuan-lun ti tʻung-i” (The Unity of the Theory of Uninterrupted Revolution and the Theory of Revolutionary Development by Stages), Hsin Chien-she (New Construction), 1959, No. 2, p. 27.

10 For an excellent analysis of the “work-study” programs, see Donald J. Munro, “Maxims and Realities in China's Educational Policy: the Half-Work, Half-Study Model,” Asian Survey (April, 1967), pp. 254–72.

11 Mao Tse-tung, “The Question of Agricultural Cooperation” (July 31, 1955), in Bowie, Robert R. and Fairbank, John K., Communist China 1955–1959, Policy Documents with Analysis (Harvard University Press, 1962), p. 104.Google Scholar

12 The following description and quotations are drawn from a variety of articles in Chung-kuo chʻing-nien (China Youth), 1958–66.

13 Chung-kuo chʻing-nien, 1960, No. 10, p. 12.

14 Chung-kuo chʻing-nien, 1960, No. 11, p. 11.

15 To borrow current political science terminology, recent trends would suggest that the Soviet Union is moving from a society dominated by “consummatory values” (which may roughly be defined as values which orient social action to an ideologically motivated “pattern of ultimate ends,” i.e., Marxism) to one based upon “instrumental values” (where action is “rationally” oriented to the achievement of a wide range of “intermediate ends”—as opposed to “transcendental ends”—through “empirical means”). For a discussion of these terms, see David Apter, The Politics of Modernization (Chicago, 1965). As applied to the Soviet Union, Apter comments: “As the system has become industrialized … and as new generations have emerged that are less committed to Marxism as a consummatory value, instrumentalism and the measurement of achievement as material output rather than moral expression have become more and more evident” (p. 427).

16 As confidently predicted by Baum, Richard D., for example, in “Ideology Redivivus,” Problems of Communism, Vol. XVI, No. 3 (May-June, 1967), 11.Google Scholar

17 Kelman, Herbert C., “From Dystopia to Utopia; an Analysis of Huxley's Island,” in Farson, Richard (ed.), Science and Human Affairs (Palo Alto, 1965), p. 168.Google Scholar

18 From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, Gerth, and Mills, (eds.), New York, 1958, p. 128.Google Scholar

This paper, originally read at the XXVII International Congress of Orientalists (meeting at Ann Arbor, Michigan, August 13–19, 1967), is a condensed version of a longer study prepared during the 1966–67 academic year when the author was a Fellow of The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Palo Alto.