THE CHINESE CAN NOT BE PATRIOTS

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 202, 11 September 1937, Page 14

THE CHINESE CAN NOT BE PATRIOTS

INABILITY TO UN1TE • «

Effect of Age-Old Customs

JN EUEOPE, as in the TJnited States of America, the social transformatiou which is in process of taking place and which has been accelerated during the last few years, is turning towards forms of society in which the individual no longer constitutes the primary unit, says Le Mois, Paris. Instead. there are all sorts of corporative groups and professional associationti which give a growing strength to the syndicalist movement. The same processes of transformatiou are producing in China eifects whieb are at once analagjous and diiferent. Analagous in the sense that the social unit is changing. Here the Chinese family is in question just as individualism is in the West. Diiferent. because China does not know how to pass from tho family gro"up unit to the syndicalist group unit without passing through the individualist stagc first. That is the knotty point of Chinese drama. The seeondary 10I0 of the individual and the fact that he exists only as part of the family is revealed by an age-old custom: The narne of a Chinese is usually composed of three characters. The first us the family name, sing, the two others forni the Christian name, or ming. Tho bestowing of Christian nanies in a family is done strictly according to rule, and every Chinese receives diiferent names at diiferent periods of his life. Thc names givcn to him during his infancy are only used by his parcnts. Other names are givcn him on catering school, on adolesccnce, on his marriago. After death he is often given a posthumous name. A clan is composed of a certain number of l'amilies and comprises all the individuals dcsccnded from a common ( stock. Thp oldcst malg pf the name is

chief of the clan. He is consulted in everything that concerns the life of the corumunity and makes his decisions with tho assistance of a family couneil composed of the oldest membcrs. The responsibility of each group is to help inorally and materially the individuals of it when in necd. If an individual is absolutely unwortliy, his name is struck off the family register which Jeaves him without suxxport or protection, for, in China, the isolatcd individual is nothing. Inside the clan each individual family is submittcd to a similar patriarchal regime. Traditioually marriago ia arranged by go-betweens, and is governed by horoscopic tests. Tho inferior position of girls has often been conimonted upon, but the wife who is mother of a sou has iu all classes a high social aud legal standing: she has fulfilled her essential function which is to give her husband a male heir thus assuring the contiiiuity of the Ancestor cult. The nnw Civil Code of 1931 proclaima the equality of tlie sexes and declares tliat young people can marry aecoidixig lo their own desires. But tliese dispositions have not cntered into general usage and they shoclc the conservative mentality of the masses. The family remaiDs tlio fundamental unit and among ihe peasauts the patriarchal regime rcniains intact. It ig prqcigely against this state of / 9

things that the intellectual elite nf the younger generation are revolting. The Chinese writer Tshanghung, sums up thc situation in these words: "Tho external preoccupation of China is Japan, its internal misfortune is the family. The paeilication of the interior. and cli'ective resistance to tho outsidc peiil can only como tlirougli the suppression of tho family, the liberation of the individual and union on a national basis above the family." !Not only does the family play a prepondorant role in social life, but the lamily ideal impreguates aud dominates the whole social organisation of the country. As a result of this, ideals of State aud of Nation aro uuknovvn iu Chiua. The Chinese Empire is conceived in the 1'orin of a large family. The State is imagined morely as an extension of the patriarchal family. Thou family being the nucleus of the

social organisation. it is only natural that family ties and bonds of kinship sliould play a prepondcrant part in public life. Up to the prosout nothing has changed in this respect and tho China of to-day, under thc government of Nanking, has retained the same ageold customs. In the t'ace oi' these unchanged social conditions the words Don.ocracy and Ihe Modern State aro void of meaning, \Vhcn, after tho ads

vont of the Eepublic, the old family ideal remained the only instigator nf action, China found herself in a tragic situation. Tho hiorarchic order ot values: Family, Empire, Humauity has been reversed by Europe who, not content with destroying the upper part of the edilice, has sapped tho very foundation of it by introducing strange ldeas regarding the individual and the nation. The gentry and the middle classes had difficulty in raismg a nation n-b deal, for the time-honoured family interests took finst place in everything. ln the struggle which is going 011 !>•- cwecn national morality and ramily mqjaiity, it is always the latter that wins. I'atriotism is only a thln and superlicial la-vcr. Tlie large and important clase of sunill landowncif, without whose support nothing can be done, is also very attached to the principle o.t' the patriarchal family. The families or this class oi'lftoi consist of at least tc» bors. A new phenoinunon is that tlie majority of young jieople who asspire to reforms come from this class. Many family dramas are the result. Finally, the new class, the industrial proletariat. the small farmers. and agricultural labourers are, so to speak, on the margin of civilisation in a society of which the pivot is the family organisation.

Whatever may be said about the merita or the defects of the family system in the past, nobody can deny that its survival is detrimental to the China of to-day. It cheeks intellectual progress, renders the micidle class mcapable of doing anything and is harmful to the merchants, flie cf^cial class and the military. It is responsible for thc collapse of China and for her inabilily to unile. " • .