The legacy of Confucius

UNESCO Courier, August-Sept, 1991 by W.E. Cheong

ANCIENT China was a landlocked state and its expansion to the coast opened a new chapter in Chinese history. Rule of the sea was achieved under the T'ang dynasty (618-906 AD) and maritime expansion continued under the Sung (960-1279 AD). Sung seamanship became a byword for excellence in the Asian maritime world, but Chinese technological superiority endured many challenges both on land and at sea, and the Mongol conquest of the Southern Sung ushered in the Yuan dynasty and brought the first hint of a naval threat that eventually reduced China to almost semi-colonial status.

During the early Ming dynasty (1368-1644 AD), the Chinese state sponsored epic maritime expeditions which took hundreds of ships and tens of thousands of men to countries as far away as East Africa. Chinese emissaries played the role of arbitrators in Ceylon and Sumatra, and in return over sixty embassies visited China within a short space of time, many bearing gifts of strange animals, plants and jewels. This grand design, which depended so heavily on state patronage, leadership and finance, lost its staunchest and most energetic patron when the Yunglo emperor died in 1423, although voyages continued under Hsuan-te. No royal patron, court official or private adventurer ever emerged to resume or indeed to finance such expeditions again.

Instead of going on to develop the maritime empire that had seemed to lie within its reach, China now turned its back to the sea. The reasons for this were historical, ideological and perhaps even temperamental. One reason may have been an intrinsic lack of interest in the sea on the part of the Chinese, for never again in Chinese history were such proclivities for maritime expansion to be revealed. Another may be found in the Confucian ethos which held trade and mercantile concerns in low esteem. The Chinese never considered trade to be a source of the state's domestic power, and merchants were never thought worthy of a leading role in state-building. A partnership between the state and the merchants in an overseas adventure for national glory or profit would have meant turning the whole Chinese social order and value system upside down.

A COUNTRY WITH ITS BACK TO THE SEA

As it turned away from the sea and concentrated on the defence of its land frontiers and the reorganization of its finances, China lost the initiative the East Asian maritime world. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a new maritime order developed in the region. Led by the japanese and closely followed by the Europeans, it was driven by the profit motive. The new European masters of the Asian seas were soon clamouring for concessions at the gates of China.

The Ming government, already predisposed towards a defensive maritime policy, closed the major ports and evacuated the coastal population inland.

For the next 200 years, the coast of China became a shady world, peopled by fidalgos (Portuguese noblemen), burghers, Wakoes (Japanese pirates), marauders and conniving merchants and officials, with in their midst perhaps a few honest traders and people earning a living from the sea. It was a world of romance, terror, treachery and illicit gain, dominated by the so-called "merchant princes who amassed fortunes from the interAsian carrying trade, thereby building up political power and becoming virtually the paymasters of local officials.

The new rulers of China after 1644, the Manchus at the head of the Ch'ing dynasty, were without experience of the sea and had inherited a maritime world which the late Ming had abandoned to private trade and local autonomy. They took forty years to pacify the south, but when this was done they returned the people to the coast and repealed the prohibition against overseas navigation. At the same time they adopted an open-door policy by opening four ports to foreign trade.

THE CHINA TRADE

By the late seventeenth century, the Dutch and Spanish had been driven from the trading stations they had established on the China coast and their places taken by the English (from the 1670s) and the French (after 1699). In the 1720s came the Ostenders, who were later followed by Dutch, Danes, Swedes and others, under the flags of their East India Companies. As European trade with China developed, it was brought under semiofficial management by a system of controls and regulations, the most intense period of legislation being from 1740 to 1760.

European trade with China between 1684 and the First Opium War in 1839 marked a revolution in the maritime history of China. After a break of 250 years the Chinese state was again turning its attention to the sea. This was the great era of trade in China tea, which displaced spices, pepper and Chinese silk as Europe's leading import from East Asia. A distinctive hybrid between official trade" and private trade" was devised by the Ch'ing to meet importunate Western demands, to safeguard the livelihood of Chinese coastal peoples and to maintain the security he coast. The relationship between Chinese merchants and the Europeans during this long period was generally peaceful for, despite their diametrically opposed views about the place of trade and merchants in society, both European mercantilism and Chinese Confucianism advocated active state intervention and a monopolistic system as the means of attaining their ends.