In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:RusselL on Chinese Civilization 23 RUSSELL ON CHINESE CIVILIZATIONI Yu DONG Ph}losophy / McMaster University Hamilton, Ont., Canada L8s 4K1 1 I am indebted to Nicholas Griffin for his valuable comments and encouragement. I thank Marty Fairbairn and Perer Lovrick for many corrections in the paper. I am also greatly indebred to Ken Blackwell for his helpful criticisms and suggesrions. • (London: Allen & Unwin, 1922), p. 20. 3 (...) Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (Princeron: Princeton U. P.), p. 173· B ertrand Russell arrived in China with Dora Black in October 1920. World War I had deepened his disillusionment with both the capitalist system and Western civilization in general. Seeking a socialist solution, he had visited Soviet Union just a few months before. But he had found that the Communist state there presented an unappealing alternative to the capitalist West in that it treated its citizens as slaves. The sad mood in which he "set out for China to seek a new hope"2 was described in his The Problem of China, published in 1922 after his nine-month visit: "It was on the Volga, in the. summer of 1920, that I first realized how profound is the disease in our Western mentality, which the Bolsheviks are attempting to force upon an essentially Asiatic population, just as Japan and the West are doing in China" (p. 18). The 1920S were a time when China, both as a nation and as a civilization, was in deep trouble. Her young people were eagerly looking outside their country to find a way of saving her. Since the 1840 Opium War, the Western Powers had poured into China, which had been a closed society, at least in Karl Popper's sense,3 for more than 3,000 years. With the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 19I1, China had been thrown into a state of anarchy by feuding warlords. The Great World Powers had both politically and economically dominated China through successive wars with her;4 through demanding indemnities, the cession of territory, fixed tariffs, etc.; and through controlling the corrupt and inept central government and warlords. Meanwhile, China was plagued by famine, piracy, brigandage, incipient rebellion,5 and the failures of various attempts at reform and revolution.6 China was well on the way toward disintegration, divided into "spheres of influence" by Britain, Germany, France, Russia and, especially, Japan. In the 1920S, China was also in the period of the May Fourth Movement-named after a popular student protest on 4 May 1919against foreign imperialism and an impotent Chinese government. It was agitated by the Treaty of Versailles which transferred, at the request ofJapan, the properties and privileges of the German sphere of influence in the Shandong Peninsula to Japan. This movement advocated learning science and adopting democratic principles in order to save China. It is important in Chinese history as a symbol of Chinese awareness of the need for the most profound changes in her tradition. All of these factors constituted the background to Russell's visit to China and thus affected the formation of his distinct view of the problem of China.? The invitation to him was a part of Chinese efforts in seeking methods from the West to save their country. Russell had already been known in China as a great philosopher, not only for his philosophy of logic and science, but also for his views on social problems. Some Chinese had access to his books: Principles ofSocial Reconstruction (1916), Political Ideals (1917), Roads To Freedom (1918), and magazine publication of parts of The Practice and Theory ofBolshevism (1920).8 Considering this background, it is quite understandable why 4 For example, Brirain and France 1856-60, Japan 1894-95, 1914-15. 5 For example, Taiping 1850-65, and the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. 6 The revolution of 1911 actually just changed the name of the government, rather than the reality of society. 7 A detailed description of this background as "psychological roots" can be seen in S. P. Odgen, "The Sage in the Inkpot", Modern Arian Studies, 16 (1982): 529-600. 8 For example, Zhang Shenfu, a student originally majoring in mathematics in Beijing University, had read almost all of... (shrink)